Global warming according to Tom Brokaw - and, believe it or not, it's good!

The documentary, that is, not global warming!

Between melting ice, Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore, global warming has forced its way into public consciousness more than ever before.  The Discovery Channel has a documentary premiering this Sunday, July 16 that should help further the process of recognizing the problem.  It's called Global Warming: What You Need to Know, narrated by Tom Brokaw.

Based on a preliminary-cut version that I was able to view, which presumably is very close to what the final product will be, the documentary is quite impressive in explaining the global warming phenomenon - and interesting to watch at the same time!  Not necessarily an easy combination to achieve.

When I saw that Tom Brokaw was the host, I wondered if he would treat us to the tired and often misleading mainstream press habit of achieving balance by having some industry lobbyist pushing fake claims on as "balance" to the scientists' findings.  I was pleasantly surprised to see he did not.

The science was not only well explained for a general audience.  Brokaw emphasizes in several places that there is a very broad consensus among scientists in the relevant fields about the reality of global warming and about the fact that human actions are driving the current very rapid increases.

Defining the problem

The first part of the documentary covers much the same ground as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, showing the melting of major ice fields in Patagonia and the Glacier National Park, the collapse of the Larson B ice shelf in Antarctica collapsing in 2002, the fact that unusually and alarming increases in the earth's atomospheric temperature have occurred within the last decade, and the effects of the use of coal and oil.

There is a segment dealing with dramatic climate events, such as the unusually severe summer heat in Australia this year (Australia's southern-hemisphere summer is during the northern hemisphere's winter) with accompanying wildfires.  Russell Rees, chief officer of the Victoria Fire service, talks about how he's seen changes in the way fires behave, and the way more sudden shifts in weather conditions are more usual now. 

Brokaw says, "Of the 21 hottest years on record,20 have occurred since 1980."  The narrative and the visuals do a good job of establishing that this increased heat is a substantial problem, creating new dangers for people and threatening to materially change the way we live.  A later segment on increasing flooding on a South Sea Island also makes the point vividly.

The show does an impressive job of explaining the science in an accessible way, including a long-term chart going back 400,000 years correlating carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere with temperature, similar to the one Gore uses in his film/slideshow.  And it explains how the CO2 holds the heat of sunlight in the atmosphere as one of the main "greenhouse gases".

A couple of sections are particularly effective in showing the magnitude of the changes.  One is on how the Amazon forest on its own and in combination with other rainforests absorbs much of the CO2 in the atmosphere.  As rainforests diminish in size, their ability to absorb CO2 is reduced, helping to accelerate the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.

Another is a segment showing how the polar bears' habitat is melting away and the bears could be looking at extinction not so far in the future.  This segment features three hopelessly cute bear cubs, which gives an emotional content to the scientific narrative.  This will provoke sneers from the Rush Limbaugh crowd, of course.  But what doesn't?

The film points out that we could be in danger of losing half of the existing species of animals, and many species of plants, in what is in geographic time an extremely rapid pace.

At the end of the segment on the forest, Brokaw pulls a rhetorical trick (I won't spoil it here) that made me think, "Oh, no, now we're going to hear how trees cause pollution".  But instead, it's an effective segway into the following segment that grabs the viewers attention.

Good science

As I said, I was apprehensive that Tom Brokaw would serve up industry-lobbyist bamboozlement to achieve the pseudo-balance that is so often a feature of what passes for journalism these days.  But the film relies on real science. 

There is at least a passing mention of the fact that some people vested interests in not recognizing the reality of global warming.  I would have preferred to see that point elaborated at greater length.  But the documentary's focus was not on the politics of it.  Given some of the scientific and superstitious hokum that gushes from the cable TV channels, the fact that the documentary sticks to the science is very impressive in itself.

The only way in which I would fault the film on that score is that it leaves the impression that the current near-general consensus formed only in the last five years, which may be technically the case, but it understates how long the problem has been a generally clear one.  The Kyoto Treaty designed to address the problem is years old, after all.

I particularly like the way the documentary describes the way scinetific understanding of the problem developed.  Having supercomputers to run long-term simulations made a qualitative leap in how global warming could be understood.  It also makes clear that there are a lot of uncertainties in the specifics of the projections because multiple feedback factors are at work.  Science thrives on uncertainty.  But the film does a good job of stating that the fact of global warming and the reality that it's a serious problem are not an uncertainties in any meaningful sense of the word.

Constructive possibilities

The documentary devotes a significant amount of time to possible solutions.  It explains "carbon sequestering" and the possibilities for ethanol.  It describes the need to preserve the Amazon and other rainforests, and discusses how the Kyoto system of carbon credits works to create incentives to reduce CO2 emissions.

Brokaw also discusses several green measures being taken in New York City, including the use of hybrid vehicles in the taxi fleet.  The segment on green architecture and its possibilities is also informative and good about showing how creative solutions are possible and practical.

At the end, there are several tips on home energy efficiency, which again will invoke sneers from the OxyContin crowd.  But let them sneer.  Documentaries like this are a valuable contribution to alerting the public to the problem of global warming.  And it makes the science sound interesting and even exciting, which is something that's valuable in itself.

The program does not attempt to explore the political conflicts over global warming.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  We need documentaries like this dealing with the science and the social implications in the broadest sense.  There are many years ahead of us in which global warming will be a major challenge for politics and business.  Those of us who want to do something about the issue will have plenty of chances to see our side make commercials with cute polar bear cubs and so forth.  And the other side will run their ads saying that the people who worry about this are snoobish, Chardonney-drinking, latte-sipping suburbanites or tree-hugging nature freaks who want to bankrupt small businesses by making their gas too expensive.

Billmon, writing about Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, worries that appealing to people's reason and good sense may be inadequate (An Inconvenient Al 07/09/06):

Al's fighting the good fight, and I salute him for it.

But there is something tragic, even a little pathetic, about Gore's stubborn faith in the ability of facts and reasoned argument to save the world. The scenes of him schlepping through airports – alone, laptop in hand, on his way to yet another city to show his slides to another room full of college students or environmental activists – hit the edge of bathos. They make Al look too much like Willy Loman. "Attention must be paid to this man." ...

In that sense, Gore’s project makes him the diametrical opposite – the antithesis – of the unnamed Cheney administration official quoted by Ron Suskind immediately after the 2004 election:

["]We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

But I'm not quite that pessimistic as Billmon seems to be in that post.  It's true that many people would prefer not to recognize the problem.  And those industries that fear discussing global warming will wind up requiring them to spend more on environmental controls than they would prefer will be glad to feed people's illusions and gin up doubts out of thin air.

But something that Sigmund Freud, a notorious pessimist about the prospects for human civilization, wrote in 1928 has stuck with me ever since I read it.  It was in his The Future of an Illusion:

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest till it has gained a hearing.  Finallly, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds.  This is one of the few points on which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but it is in itself a point of no small importance.  And from it one can derive yet other hopes.

So, yes, there are decades of political battles over global warming ahead of us.  But reality does have a way of imposing itself.  Devastating hurricanes and rising sea levels will inevitably make their their presence known, as they are doing already.  And in the battle against bunk science, whether of the Christian fundamentalist or the industry-lobbyist varieties, factual reporting and real scientific knowledge has a critical role to play.  As Bob "The Daily Howler" Somerby wrote in his column of 07/10/06:

On the liberal web, we often brag that we represent the “reality-based” community.  In the future, progressives will continue to find themselves at war with well-funded dissemblers - tribunes of powerful upper-class interests.  Our view?  Aggressive embrace of “reality” - of the traditions of fact and logic - will constitute our best hope for success. It’s always tempting to overstate - and being human, we all end up doing it.  But for progressives, it’s a road to defeat.  There they go again, we should say, when tribunes of the powerful do it.

An "aggressive embarce of reality":  I'm sure Freud would approve.

The problems of tolerance (1): Are there problems with tolerance?

"Satan's Chambermaid Emerges Again", wrote Steve Soto of The Left Coaster, announcing his post on the now-notorious appearance of Mad Annie "Ilsa" Coulter on the Today show on 06/06/06.  Think Progress has excerpts from Mad Annie's interview with Matt Lauer (Coulter on 9/11 Widows: ‘I Have Never Seen People Enjoying their Husbands’ Death So Much’ ).  I was particularly struck by the parts I've bolded here:

LAUER: So if you lose a husband, you no longer have the right to have a political point of view?

COULTER: No, but don’t use the fact that you lost a husband as the basis for being able to talk about, while preventing people from responding. Let Matt Lauer make the point. Let Bill Clinton make the point. Don’t put up someone I am not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of their grief.

LAUER: Well apparently you are allowed to respond to them.

COULTER: Yeah, I did.

LAUER: So, in other words.

COULTER: That is the point of liberal infallibility. Of putting up Cindy Sheehan, of putting out these widows, of putting out Joe Wilson. No, no, no. You can’t respond. It’s their doctrine of infallibility. Have someone else make the argument then.

LAUER: What I’m saying is I don’t think they have ever told you, you can’t respond.

COULTER: Look, you are getting testy with me.

LAUER: No. I think it’s a dramatic statement. “These broads are millionaires stalked by stalked by grief-parazzies”? “I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s deaths so much”?

COULTER: Yes, they are all over the news.

This is actually a very common conservative schtick, repeated over and over and over again, that The Liberals are tryingto suppress conservatives from expressing themselves.  This may seem a strange kind of charge when we have conservatives expressing themselves, often in the most outrageous ways, from Republican hate radio to cable TV news (expecially FOX) and all over the mainstream media.

It also may seem odd coming from a woman like Mad Annie who wrote a book accusing The Liberals of being traitors to America and who suggested poisoning a Supreme Court Justice of whom she disapproves.

David Neiwert, who has been a keen observer of the ways in which hardcore white-supremacist and other radical-right notions get mainstreamed into the Republican Party through willing transmitters like Mad Annie, linked to this little piece of her recent history, specifically a lecture at Loyola Univeristy in Chicago:

I went to my seat and prepared myself mentally to take in Ms. Coulter objectively. The Loyola Anti-War Network protested her appearance by forming a chain in the back of the auditorium and facing the other way. As soon as Ms. Coulter came out she said, "Since you are feminists, standing makes your butts look really big." I was a little upset by this comment, but I held my cool. I was stupid and had the college republicans seat me up close so I could get good pictures. Needless to say I was sitting next to some Coulter-lovers who were practically foaming at the mouth in ecstacy with all of Coulter's comments. All of the protestors were taken out by security. This elevated the level of joy in the Coulter-supporters sitting around me. ...

The protesting from the balcony only increased with time with shouts of "ANN IS A RACIST" to even an immature, yet mildly amusing, call for "Show us your tits."

Ann addressed her supporters in the crowd with this statement. "You're men. You're heterosexuals. Take 'em out." She chided them further when they did not rise. Before you knew it there was about 25 students marching to the balcony to supposedly "take out" the protestors above. I saw a priest holding students back and deans and security warning the students to go back to their seats. Chaos erupted. Ann left after taking one question.  (my emphasis)

Given our current environment, where someone like Mad Annie can pull stuff like this and go on the Today show with its nationwide audience and whine that The Liberals are " preventing people from responding" to criticism of her Dear Leader Bush, it makes me think again about what tolerance actually means in a society like ours.

Michelle Goldberg's recent work on the Christian Right also brings up another important aspect of tolerance, which is its role in providing a way to come up with useful public policies based on a realistic appreciation of the facts.  She explained at the TPM Cafe Book Club in her post of 05/22/06, What is Christian nationalism?, what was the main question she sat out to explore in writing Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006).  In that post she writes:

I began the book that would become "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," shortly before the 2004 election. It was born out of my sense that large swaths of right-wing America were living in what seemed like an all-encompassing alternate reality, and that that reality was slowly, subtlety but inexorably crowding out truth and empirical fact in our national life. As a reporter for Salon, I'd written about the way religious fundamentalists who reject the very notion of secular science were given authority over things like international population policy and domestic sex education. I'd looked into the prevalent end-times beliefs that undergird Christian Zionism and lead some American evangelicals to support the most irredentist Israeli settlers. At conservative conferences where Republican leaders gathered, I would hear the most paranoid John Birch-style conspiracy theories passed off as conventional wisdom. Increasingly, the central cultural divide in America seemed not just political or religious but epistemological.

Epistomology being the philosophical term for how one approaches reality.  For philosophical purists, it comes from the Greek words ἐπίσταμαι (episteme; to know,understand) and λόγος (logos; the thing being spoken of).  She comes up with some good examples of how some faith-based ways of understanding reality can have implications far beyond matters that most people would regard as purely religious:

The reframing of evolution, a theory undisputed among scientific experts, as one side of a public "debate" is an enormous victory for the Christian right. The right has helped create an atmosphere in which our understanding of empirical reality is subject to political pressure, in which the findings of science are trumped by ideology. It has succeeded where leftist postmodernists failed in subverting the authority of the rational.

When truth loses its meaning, all manner of deceptions can be fostered. How do we know the founding fathers didn't intend a theocracy? Who's to say there weren't weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Can anyone prove there isn't a homosexual conspiracy? Was John Kerry a war hero, or did he shoot himself? There are two sides to every story, right? Who are you going to believe, your pastor or the liberal media?

This kind of psychological climate - at once utterly credulous and sullenly cynical - gives totalitarian movements space to grow. As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it."

She also talks about the irony that, after years of conservative polemics against postmodernism and related concept.  Such criticism has come from no less an authority than Lynne Cheney, wife of Dark Lord Cheney himself, in a 1996 book called Telling the Truth (no, this is not the fiction one with the lesbian scenes in it).  Goldberg writes:

There's a tremendous irony in the way conservatives have adopted their position on evolution. After all, the right has been complaining about relativism - the idea that there is no absolute truth - for years. Now, challenging the conclusions of science in the name of cultural tolerance, conservatives have created their own version of radical deconstructionism. Aping the Frenchacademicians they once excoriated, they're undermining the very idea of empirical reality, dismissing inconvenient facts as the product of an oppressive ideology. ...

Cheney's book abounds in examples of the havoc postmodern ideas have wrought in American life. At the outset, she wrote of how the "author of a textbook for future teachers urges skepticism for the idea that the people now known as American Indians came to this hemisphere across the Bering land bridge. Indian myths do not tell this story, she writes.  Moreover, she observes, the scientific account has nothing 'except logic' to recommend it."

It would be hard to make up a better analogy to the intelligent design [creationist] movement. Like the guilt-ridden lefties they revile, conservatives are demanding official skepticism for an idea accepted among the vast majority of scientists because it conflicts with religious myth, and attacking those who would uphold traditional standards as anti-Christian bigots.  This pattern doesn't just apply to evolution - it marks the Christian nationalists' entire relationship to reality.  The right has a host of pet pseudoscientific theories that buttress its biblical worldview. They include reparative therapy to "cure" homosexuality; a mythical link between abortion and breast cancer; "post-abortion syndrome," a psychiatric disorder that exists almost exclusively in pro-life lore; and the efficacy of abstinence-only education, an entire cottage industry of scientific distortion.  (my emphasis)

"Guilt-ridden lefties", by the way, is another favorite if generally kooky notion of the radical right.

Goldberg notes that the Christian Right has achieved a convergence of epistolomogical interests with industrial scamsters and lobbyists who throw up smokescreens protesting "junk science" whenever they want to avoid some inconvenient regulation.  She even catches a couple of creationists in a 1999 book (Three Views on Creation and Evolution by John Mark Reynolds and J.P. Moreland) actually embracing postmodernism overtly, writing, "In a postmodern world, we see no reason for traditional  Christians to give up on an idea that intrigues them".

With industry advocacy think-tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Christian Right pseudo-science groups like the Center for Science and Culture and the National Association for Research and Therapy, the rightwing has created a whole infrastructure to manufacture artifical pseudo-scientific claims that actually challenge science itself.

And, of course, what we generously call our "press corps" cooperates:

Cowed by charges of liberal bias, the mainstream media turns to these outfits for balance - and thus creates the perception that there's scientific controversy over issues like global warming or evolution, when in fact there's remarkable consensus.

The present role of the Christian Right has raised questions of what counts as tolerance, what is the function of tolerance and what are its appropriate limits in public debate and public policy.

These questions are inseparable from the question of how our society sorts out the true from the false when it comes to information to shape policies.

And those are the sorts of questions addressed in a 1965 book that periodically comes to my mind, A Critique of Pure Tolerance.  It's mainly known because of the third of the three essays in it, "Repressive Tolerance" by Herbert Marcuse, the "neo-Marxist" philosopher from the Frankfurt School of "critical theory".  But the two preceding essays also help a great deal in putting the most famous of the three into perspective.

I'm going to post separately about each of the three essays that comprise that book to see what light they can throw on our current situation.

Other posts in the series:

2.  Robert Paul Wolff on going "Beyond Tolerance"
3.  Barrington Moore, Jr., on science and tolerance
4.  Tolerance, social analysis and radical democracy
5.  Herbert Marcuse on repressive tolerance
6.  The need for tolerance, its limits and its "repressive" form

Tags: ann coulter, tolerance

What Second World War analogies would the neocons use to justify this?

From  U.N. vote on N. Korea resolution delayed by Edith Lederer, Associated Press 07/10/06:

Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on North Korea's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible Security Council vote.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters his government wants a vote on the measure "as soon as possible."

"I think we must send a message that's as clear as possible" to North Korea, he said.

Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

Japan's constitution bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself.  (my emphasis)

Since the neoconservatives love those Second World War analogies so much, which ones could they possibly apply to something like this? What could they use?  What? What? What?  Inquiring bloggers want to know.

Iraq War: War crimes

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

I have a couple of items here related to war crimes by Americans in Iraq.  First, I'm going to make a couple of framing comments that I would think should be taken for granted.  But I know that in the US, they are often not.  So:

The US has laws of war and rules of engagement.  Violations of them are violations that need to be addressed in the appropriate way.  Pointing out those violations and/or insisting that they be dealt with properly is exactly that.  It's not a criticism of the soldiers who do not commit those actions.  Conversely, laws of war and rules of engagement are not the same as the laws governing "aggressive" or "preventive" wars and their planning.  Whether initiating the war was legal or illegal, just or unjust, does not make the  laws of war and rules of engagement of any less force or any less legitimacy.

There are also international laws and customs of war that apply to all combatants.  The apply whether or not the other side is observing them.  In Iraq, the insurgents and the sectarian combatants are violating the laws and customs of warfare on a large scale with random killings of noncombatants and by torturing and murdering prisoners.  Many of them are brutal and sadistic killers.  None of that exonerates any Americans for committing war crimes, especially premeditated one.  There is no excuse for insurgents to capture two Americans, torture them and murder them.  There is no excuse for American soldiers going to a farm house, raping a 15-year-old girl and murdering her and three members of her family.

If the blowhard war fans don't like that, then they should channel their passions into football or baseball.  That way they can cheer mindlessly for their side and not have it get our soldiers killed or make hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world hate the United States.

This report is from Sunday:  U.S. Military Braces for Flurry of Criminal Cases  in Iraq by Robert Worth 07/09/06

No American serviceman has been executed since 1961. But in the past month, new cases in Iraq have led to charges against 12 American servicemen who may face the death penalty in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians. ...

As investigators complete their work, military officials say, the total of American servicemen charged with capital crimes in the new cases could grow substantially, perhaps exceeding the total of at least 16 other marines and soldiers charged with murdering Iraqis throughout the first three years of the war. ...

The incidents are far from the only ones in which American forces killed Iraqis. But serious criminal charges in such cases have been rare until now. In many earlier cases, the killings have been found to be justifiable, and the soldiers or marines in question have often been handled through administrative or nonjudicial processes.

The last soldier to be executed was John A. Bennett, hanged in 1961 after being convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl. ...

This guy from the Lexington Institute seems to be trying to minimize such crimes:

"This is a war in which soldiers and civilians are constantly mingling, and they often don't understand each other," said Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute. "The enemy has a conscious strategy of demoralizing U.S. forces by disorienting and confusing them. Against that backdrop, the number of alleged atrocities is quite low compared with other conflicts in the past."

In Vietnam, a much longer conflict, 95 American soldiers and 27 marines were convicted of killing noncombatants. ...

In the heaviest penalty yet issued in the Iraq war, Sgt. Michael P. Williams was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of premeditated murder last year in the killing of two Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. The sentence was later reduced to 25 years.

"I think there's a recognition that these are weird environments," said Eugene R. Fidell, a specialist in military law. "The danger is, carried to an extreme, that can mean throwing the law books out."

Steve Gilliard (Slow motion collapse 07/09/06) reminds us that these cases are reflections of serious strains being placed on the Army, that's likely to leave long-term organizational damage:

We're watching the Army collapse in front of our faces.  Taking 40 year old grunts, people in Cat IV, people who cannot function in a high stress combat environment and shouldn't be asked to.  Well, this is what happens[.]  Years of combat, untreated PTSD, emotional issues at home caused by deployment.

The whole dirty story will come out, how Rummy ruined the Army out of indifference.  But it may be men like Green [the ex-soldier accused in the rape-murder at Mahmoudiyah] who pay at  the end of a needle[.]

This report, also from Sunday, add some detail to what was widely suspected already in the Mahmoudiyah rape-murder case:  Two dead soldiers, eight more to go, vow avengers of Iraqi girl's rape by Akeel Hussein in Mahmoudiyah and Colin Freeman London Telegraph 07/09/06. 

The American soldiers accused of raping an Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her family may have provoked an insurgent revenge plot in which two of their comrades were abducted and beheaded last month, it has been claimed.

Pte Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pte Thomas Tucker, 25, were snatched from a checkpoint near the town of Yusufiyah on June 16 in what was thought at the time to be random terrorist retaliation for the killing of the al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in an American air strike two days earlier.

Now, however, residents of the neighbouring town of Mahmoudiyah have told The Sunday Telegraph that their kidnap was carried out to avenge the attack on a local girl Abeer Qassim Hamza, 15, and her family. They claim that insurgents have vowed to kidnap and kill another eight American troops to exact a 10-to-one revenge for the rape and murder of the girl. ...

US army officials have already begun a separate inquiry into possible links between the two cases, although they insist at this stage that it is purely "speculation". However, locals in Mahmoudiyah, a Sunni market town in the heart of the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad, say relatives of the dead girl's family with contacts to insurgent groups asked them to take a "blood for blood" revenge.

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05

Frenzy on the Right

Several bloggers have been posting some very good stuff the last few days about the spasms of our wrong-wingers over the New York Times alleged "treason".

I should start off by saying that the charge against the Times is horse-pucky.  The best single piece I've seen on this is by Gene Lyons: Times revealed little that Bush hadn’t told us Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 07/05/06.  I excerpted part of it at The Blue Voice.  Lyons shows how its possible to recognize the nastiness of the Republican campaign against an independent press while recognizing that the Times is not the Holy Grail of journalism.  Do I need to say more on that than "Judith Miller"?

Paul Waldman also has a good analysis of the right's frenzy over the Times:  A declaration of war Media Matters for America 06/30/06.

The right has kept the media under constant assault for decades, and the response from the media has been to bend over backward to prove they aren't biased - by being harder on Democrats. They should have learned long ago that the "liberal bias" charge has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the news. It is a political strategy, a way of "working the ref" and providing easy excuses for public rejection of the right's goals. But what we have seen this week is something qualitatively different.

Given the constant drumbeat of criticism directed at the media from conservatives, it might be easy to dismiss this latest expulsion of bile as just more of the same.  But it's worth stepping back to take a look at exactly what has occurred over the past week.  Members of Congress have suggested revoking the Capitol Hill credentials of journalists, so that only news organizations that do not displease the ruling party may be permitted to report from Congress.  Other members have accused members of the media of "treason" and advocated their prosecution.  A conservative television and radio personality suggested that the government establish an Office of Censorship to screen the news.  Another said, "I would have no problem with [New York Times editor Bill Keller] being sent to the gas chamber." The House of Representatives passed a resolution saying it "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations."

In short, the right assembled a posse this week - vigilantes stalking television studios, radio airwaves, print, and the Internet, their apparent goal to revoke the First Amendment.  (my emphasis)

Billmon has a good piece looking at the Bush administration's authoritarian measures from a traditional democratic viewpoint, asking what would happen if a Democratic President were to do such things:  The Totalitarian Temptation 07/02/06.  Billmon has obviously put a lot of thought and research into this issue of the erosion of democracy. 

But I think he misses something key in this piece.  The Republicans have effectively established The Party as their ultimate measure of authority.  When The Party controls all three branches of the federal government as it does now, Republicans are generally willing to back an authoritarian Presidency.  Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was a serious legal setback for Bush's "unitary Executive" doctrine of Presidential lawlessness.   (Al Gore's description of it as a "unilateral Executive" theory is actually more appropriate.)  But the Republicans in Congress and the rightwing echo chamber have been fine with it.

If a Democrat becomes President again, Republicans will have not the slightest hesitation to use the powers of Congress as well as the courts to restrict even legitimate exercises of Presidential power.  This is one of the problems of having merged their Party with the Christian Right.  As Gene Lyons describe the latest frenzy of the right in the article linked above, "Reasonable people never want to believe that extremists believe their own rhetoric. But quit kidding yourselves. This is mass psychosis."

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates is doing a series of posts on the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, and the video game inspired by it.  He writes in The World According to Tim LaHaye: Chapter OneTalk2Action blog 06/26/06:

LaHaye expects there is an upcoming huge battle between good and Godly Christians and the forces of evil working with Satan's chief End Times henchman, the antichrist.

So the outcome of Tim LaHaye's "non-fiction" writing, the Left Behind series of novels, and the video game, is the training of young Christian evangelicals to rebel against the elected government of the United States when they decide government leaders are in service to the antichrist. And the task for these young Crusaders is to gun down the agents of Satan and their witting and unwitting allies among the ranks of the non-believers.

And from the Left Behind novels, we know this list is likely to include not just secularists, but also homosexuals, feminists, abortion providers, as well as Jews, Catholics, Hindus, and Muslims...especially Muslims.  (my emphasis)

When you're looking at things in abstract religious terms of Good vs. Evil, and when you see the GOP as God's Own Party, it makes sense that you would be willing to use extreme measures to keep God's Party in power, and also to use extreme measures to return it to power.  There is some reasoning like this going on in today's Republican Party, and not just on the fringes.  From the Clinton impeachment to Bush's unilateral Executive claims, the Republican Party has acted in that manner.

This is how they can be authoritarian in relation to The Party but militantly anti-government when the Antichrist Party is in power.

Molly Ivins hears the raw, authoritarian growl of bigotry in the Republicans' anti-immigrant rhetoric (More Immigrant Bashing on the Way TruthDig.com 07/05/06):

A “Bush Signals Shift in Stance on Immigrants” headline is the early warning sign that we’re about to get an all-out immigrant-bashing campaign for the fall, complete with xenophobia, racism and blaming the weakest, least powerful people in the country for everything that’s wrong with it.

Glenn Greenwald is writing about how The thug and intimidation tactics of the Far Right go mainstream 07/05/06  (scroll down; his blog is oddly configured somehow), specifically the attempt to intimidate bloggers by prominently posting their names and addresses along with inflammatory descriptions of them.  This is a lot like the cowardly Klan practice in the South during the segregation days of making anonymous threatening phone calls.  His conclusion:

As the Bush movement collapses, it is only to be expected that its more fevered adherents will resort to increasingly extremist rhetoric and tactics, out of frustration and anger, if for no other reason. The penetration of these thug tactics into increasingly mainstream venues on the Right is one of the more glaring, and more disturbing, developments of late.

David Neiwert has been excellent about describing the ways in which radical-right ideas and practices are "mainstreamed" into the Republican Party, most recently in the immigration debate with racist and white-supremacist rhetoric and the thuggery of the vigilante border guards.  He has done original reporting and research on the radical right for years and is the best I know of right now in describing the far-right fringe.  Neiwert wrote on 07/03/06 about The drums of elimination.

Documenting the mounting drumbeat of eliminationist rhetoric from the American right has long been a staple of this blog. But even I have to shake my head in wonder at the turn of events this past week - most of it in the wake of the New York Times' publication of stories detailing the Bush administration's use of banking data in its search for terrorists.

The upshot has been a significant escalation in this rhetoric, coming not just from the usual rabid quarters but coming over the national airwaves from figures who supposedly represent mainstream conservatism - and it is aimed not just at the usual "liberal" targets, but at the entire institution of the free press.

And perhaps most remarkably, the press itself - continuing its chief trend so far this century -- has been remarkably timid about confronting it. ...

What is perhaps most disturbing about this current outbreak is that it's occurring in a context in which the drums have been getting louder all around, especially in recent months. Perhaps the most important front for this has been the immigration debate, which has opened the floodgates for all kinds of right-wing extremism to gain adoption from mainstream conservatives.

The talk has also become a staple for local and national radio talk show hosts, and it has generally become imbedded in the media discourse to the point that it now seems almost unremarkable.

He also links to this post by Michelle Goldberg, whose excellent book of reporting on the Christian Right, Kingdom Coming, was published this year:  The F-Word Huffington Post 07/02/06.  The f-word in this case being "fascism".  I find it difficult to use the concept of fascism as a framework for talking about the rise of authoritarianism in the US, just because even political scientists and historians have trouble defining just what is distinct about fascism from other form of dictatorship.  It's also a concept that's mainly used as an insult word in American political language.

But Goldberg's short piece is good:

In his book The Nature of Fascism, the historian Roger Griffin explains how fascism goes mainstream. "In its chrysalis stage fascism is but a publicistic and activistic (or 'agit-prop') phenomenon on the fringe of mainstream political culture and developments, condemned to lead a marginal existence in articles, pamphlets and books, often with negligible readerships and in the radicalism of ineffectual political factions," he writes. "Even the progression to the columns of large-circulation newspapers and well-attended public meetings represents a quantum leap for the diffusion of fascism which is still far removed from nation-wide mass rallies, extensive paramilitary violence and the 'seizure' of state power."

American fascism has made this quantum leap. Low characters with plenty of access to the columns of large-circulation newspapers - not to mention TV talk shows - have spent the last few days screaming for the heads of the journalists at the premier newspaper in America. ...

In my book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism I write that, while I certainlydon't believe America is on the verge of religious totalitarianism, something dark is loose in this country, and it could get worse as the right's military triumphalism curdles in the wake of failure in Iraq ...

... Mention fascism, and immediately people think you're comparing Bush to Hitler. (In fact, he's much more like the bastard spawn of Paris Hilton and Francisco Franco.)  Yet while America remains long way from real fascism, fascism has come a long way in America.

That's an inspired phrase!  Bush as "the bastard spawn of Paris Hilton and Francisco Franco."

I wonder how she would describe Cheney and Rummy.

Maverick McCain gets some flack from the right

Some conservative are spreading nasty rumors about that media darling Maverick McCain:  Conservative site launches full-frontal attack on McCain, questioning 'explosive' temper Raw Story 07/06/06.  (Thanks to Ereading7 for pointing out this article to me.)

The "conservative site" in question is from Ronald Kessler at NewsMax.com, so apply appropriate critical judgment.  But he got an on-the-record quote from former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith, and a weird story from ex-Congressman John LeBoutillier (both Republicans).  The main signficance of the story is the fact that some conservatives are actively seeking to trash the bold Maverick, who has been one of the most conservative Senators.

Who knows what that's all about?  Obviously, some conservatives will prefer someone who doesn't even pretend to be a Marvelous Maverick and don't think McCain will sufficiently kow-tow to the Christian Right.  Although from McCain's performance, it's hard to see why they would worry about that.

Raw Story, who I give higher credibility than NewsMax, had a couple of anonymous quotes from Democrats on this:

A conservative website has launched a full-frontal attack on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who the story says has an "irrational, explosive" temper, citing two former Republican senators and GOP aides.

At least two Democratic aides have told RAW STORY McCain has shown a similar temperament. Multiple sources have also said that McCain has a practice of leaking stories on those he doesn't get along with - and is believed by several reporters and Senate aides to have been behind a series of leaks in the Jack Abramoff scandal.  McCain's office has vehemently denied the claims.

The adoring "press corps" will no doubt cite these conservative attacks as further evidence of the bold Maverick's independence and political courage.

Chuckie Watch 119: Chuckie gits worked up

In my last post, I was quoting an inspired description of the stereotypical couch-potato warmonger.  And it reminded me that we ain't checked in on Chuckie in a while.  Since February, actually.

So, I was thinking, with the Republicans going all out to fire up the "angry white guy" vote, Chuckie must be pretty fired up about now.

And shore nuff, in Chuckie's Fourth of July Thoughts 07/03/06 (I guess that makes them actually Third of July thoughts, but we git the idea), he's on a roll.  You might say Chuckie pretty near has bile squirting out of both ears.

Chuckie's been hearin' about this here New York Times problem.

And Chuckie don't like it.

Even as much as the New York Times hates George Bush and America I can’t understand why they would put themselves and all America in jeopardy by printing sensitive material such as this. Do they think that the  New York Times building is invulnerable from these crazed fanatics?

I guess it will never be known how many American servicemen’s lives will be lost because they printed that article. Money is the lifeblood of al Qaida and the other fanatical Islamic crazies who are killing our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They call it Freedom Of The Press, I call it treason.

Yeah, all this here freedom of the press crap, what's that got to do with Independence Day?  Chuckie knows that what makes Amurca great is goin' to war and killin' foreigners.  Anythang else is just treason, dad-burn it!

Somehow, though, Chuckie's ranting doesn't sound that much different than what the "respectable" Republican pundits and propagandists are saying.  Funny about that.

But ole Chuckie, he knows who the real enemy is, cause, you know, Chuckie knows about these thangs:

But we can win that war, it’s going to take vigilence, sacrifice and dedication but we can beat the terrorists.

What really worries me is the war we are losing at home with an out of control media and politically motivated, self-serving politicians who care for nothing except gaining or maintaining power.

Yeah, The Terrorists are a bunch of wusses, we'll just roll right over them.  But these here liberals and stuff who believe in freedom of the press and speech and religion and the like, now them people are a serious danger to Amurca.

Also, Chuckie is worried about these here politicians who don't agree with Dear Leader Bush:

If anything makes me sick, it’s the mealy-mouthed politicians who run around the world blasting the nation they are supposed to be serving. They all say, “I’m against the war, but I’m for the troops.”

No you’re not for the troops, you’re only for a political party or the furtherance of your own stupid and selfish political ambitions and what you’ve turned into is a cheering section for the bad guys on the other side of the wire, lobbing mortar rounds at the sons and daughters of America.

Let's see.  Big majorities of the public have been highly critical of the war and are saying it wasn't worth it and so on.  So, that means most Americans are a "cheering section for the bad guys on the other side of the wire, lobbing mortar rounds at the sons and daughters of America", right Chuckie?

ChuckieThought is pretty deep sometimes.  Like a swamp or something.

Chuckie's the perfect example of the blowhard white guy that I was talking about in the previous post.  The idea of actually ending a war is beyond them.  Chuckie's going to have a lot to spew about if Dear Leader keeps on winning and winning for 2 1/2 more years in Iraq.

Chuckie's commenters were inspired by his latest, too.  Diamercer says:

Our troops need so much but the main thing they ask for is for Americans to respect what they are doing for them.  They give their lifes everyday for us and we turn around and blame them for things that are done during WAR.  I know some of the troops that have come back from Iraq and they are so mixed up in their heads with the things that happen over there.  If not for them we would not be America.

Uh, they come back mixed up in their heads so if not for them we wouldn't be America?  That's weird enough that I almost agree with it.

LeeSilby says :

We have a friend of my daughters that did not have a father she always had me for those very hard times as a teenager. When she told me she wanted to go into the Army I told it would be harder for her as a girl than man. But she should if it felt right in her heart. She is over there now in Baqubah, Iraq these kids are giving all for our freedom and these politicians should NOT be playing with there lifes! They are willing to give them for our Freedom why cant these as* H**es at least be on there side. Excuse me I try not to swear! And the press needs to get there Heads out of there trainees A**'S!

The press should get "there Heads out of there trainees A**S"?  Huh?

AbidinHim writes:

Someone posted elsewhere that we don't think for ourselves here on this board and we just follow behind you like sheep and agree with everthing you say. Well it's easy to agree with you because a lot of us feel and believe the same way you do about these things. In my case, yer better with the words than I am.

Yeah, Chuckie does have a way with words.

Hokie writes (that's the name he uses) all in bold:

Same as most of America's other papers. That's the tip of the iceberg. Theses internet blogs, everyday writers to the editors, your everyday Joe on the street. In common is a deep rooted hatred for President Bush. Most unfounded, just repeating mindless blather they hear from the yahoo who hates, hates, hates.

So these peoople say Bush lied, although they speak the truth because they repeat each other's lies such as "Bush went to war because of Daddy" or "Bush went to war for the oil".

And Grubbworm (!) offers this reflection, also in all bold:

I once had two guys get into my home, tie me up with cable, and put a gun to my head while they took every damn cent that I had in cash laying around.  They even managed to get my atm cards and passwords and emptied what they could.  As a normal human being, I was scared out of my wits and pleaded for my life, especially after they threatend to kill me.  Did my 'love' stop that invasion?  No.  There ain't a bit of love that would have stopped that night, and for the rest of my days, I will never forget that night.  Its the same as 9/11.  if we had given Osama bin Laden a group hug, would that have stopped him from hitting the WTC?  I don't think so.  Hitler wasn't done in by some damn fool group hug either.  The russians weren't in much of a loving mood when they found the bunker.

Yep, Chuckie's got him some interesting fans for his political wisdom.