The Left's Movement Bubble
Oh Van Jones, your past is so absurd that you’ve managed to align Glenn Beck and mainstream opinion! Is the Obama Administration unaware that a frighteningly large minority of citizens imagine that the president secretly harbors radical Marxist impulses that he intends to surreptitiously advance via the federal bureaucracy? It’s as though George W. Bush appointed a guy who spent years prior publicly agitating for the invasion of Iraq in order to seize its oil fields and establish an imperial foothold in the Middle East. (Heh.)
I’m surprised to see so many voices in the left blogosphere defending Mr. Jones. I’d normally be sympathetic to a guy who gets forced out of government for a faux-outrage controversy unrelated to his official duties. But this is the rare instance where, if you explained the past actions at issue to the average apolitical person, they’d regard the guy as someone who shouldn’t be entrusted to do any government job that affords a lot of discretion over millions of dollars, and any outrage they felt wouldn’t be faux.
Let’s be charitable and assume that Mr. Jones no longer holds the controversial views we’ve heard about. I am also sympathetic to the notion that there should be second acts in American life, and Meg Whitman’s recent endorsement provides some evidence that the guy was doing good work. But Mr. Jones’ defenders surely recognize that giving someone like this the benefit of the doubt would be an utter reversal of the standard historically and presently applied everywhere else in American politics by the left, the right, and the bulk of the American people.
In The Huffington Post Carl Popes calls the whole ordeal “a lynching.” Sigh. He writes:
Anyone who has been an effective advocate for these communities has said things that will sound shocking to people in some other parts of America — just as anyone who genuinely represents certain evangelical communities will have beliefs about morality that more-secular Americans might have a hard time with.
So lynch mobs can form up from all perspectives.
Wrong choice of metaphor! It’s perfectly acceptable for Americans to penalize presidents for appointing people whose views they find exceptionally odious or nutty — and also okay for presidents to decide those folks aren’t worth the trouble of defending. That goes for radical quasi-Marxists who sympathize with 9/11 truthers and radical evangelicals who think American foreign policy should hasten the end times by fomenting unrest in the Middle East. I can assure Mr. Pope that there are plenty of blacks and evangelicals who do great work in their respective communities and don’t hold these views!
The excellent Kevin Drum calls this a scalp for Glenn Beck. Look, Mr. Beck rants about all sorts of nonsense everyday. Most of it is ignored outside the Fox News bubble, except to mock it. Every so often, he’s sure to talk about something that the Obama Administration is actually unable to defend — and then lots of other people start talking about it, and a resignation happens. It’s kinda weird to attribute that to Mr. Beck.
Jane Hamsher writes:
If these groups, if these liberal leaders, let Jones just hang there while Glenn Beck pounds his chest and celebrates the scalp, we have no liberal institutions. What we have are a bunch of neoliberal enablers who have found a nice comfortable place in the DC establishment that they don’t want to jeopardize, a place on the new K-Street gravy train that they don’t want to lose. Dropping Van Jones from their rolodex is a small price to pay.
If there is going to be a serious progressive movement in this country capable of standing up for health care against an industry that spends $1.4 million a day on lobbying, we can’t just look to the members of the Progressive Caucus and say “hey, you, get something done.” They need cover. They need to know that they will be supported. And people like Van Jones who have given their lives to causes we say we value like prison reform and environmental advocacy need to know that they will be defended, and not handed over to Glenn Beck as an acceptable casualty in the battle for K-Street dollars.
This is basically the same argument that certain conservatives make when I criticize Human Events and World Net Daily — if there’s going to be a serious conservative movement in this country, they say, you can’t just have a bunch of Inside The Beltway elites. You need to loyally support the most energetic partisan fighters and the hard core among the grassroots, even if they have some associations or views or past statements that the average American would regard as nuttily odious. Ideological movements at most stay silent about these fringe friendlies — also see Ron Paul’s libertarians — so you’ll inevitably have a day when it’s the left calling for the resignation of some guy who signed an Obama birther petition. And I won’t feel sorry for him either.
But today’s reminder is that just as the grassroots right traffics in its paranoid nonsense, the grassroots left has subsections of people who are sympathetic to militant Marxism, 9/11 trutherism, and other idiocies that don’t seem to hurt their rise in that movement. This is why the average American is deeply suspicious of career political activists and people who rise via both parties into low level administration posts. They’re right to be! A lot of true believers climb ideological ladders in this country and wind up in government, leaving the average citizen upset because they suspect there are plenty of folks who aren’t ideological extremists, but are nevertheless qualified to fill those posts — they just don’t happen work in circles with connections to a partisan political world where loyalty to the cause is prized above all else.
All this helps explain why I also disagree with Andy McCarthy, who writes:
Obama picked Van Jones because Obama adheres to Jones’s Alinskyite views and tactics, and is entirely comfortable with what most of the public would see as the horrifying specter of Jones managing how billions of public dollars are spent.
I’ll bet Mr. McCarthy is familiar enough with the Bush Administration to know that all sorts of low-level executive branch posts were filled with people who happened to harbor extreme views of one sort or another — whether radical evangelical views or outside the mainstream foreign policy views or anti-immigrant views or even Smith Point misogynistic views — that President Bush decidedly didn’t share. They got their jobs because they were “in the movement,” secured loyalties by working within it, and happened to hold odious positions that bothered the president less than other odious positions because they belonged to kinds of people he knew personally, who seemed good-hearted in general, and were “on the same team.”
Mr. McCarthy and I are both speculating, but I’ll bet that’s what happened here too.
amen! i don’t follow current politics too closely, but yeah, this is crazy. defending van jones would be political suicide, and rightly so.
— razib · Sep 7, 08:37 AM · #
Conor:
It seems you agree that Van Jones is bad because the mainstream media agrees he’s bad. And no doubt trutherism has aspects of anti-Semitism to it in addition to anti-Americanism.
But you seem reluctant to give Glenn Beck the credit for being the first to raise an issue that eventually led to an Obama resignation (which is, no two ways about it, bad press for Obama and a victory for those trying to stop his plans).
I have two questions for you:
I. Is there any figure on the left who you think is bad, but who generally gets respectful reviews from the MSM?
II. Is there any figure on the right who you think is good, but who generally takes undeserved flack from the MSM?
Would help me in understanding your viewpoint.
— asdf · Sep 7, 10:00 AM · #
ASDF,
Actually, I think that Van Jones is bad due to his affiliation with radical Marxists and 9/11 truthers. I don’t think the mainstream media has written much about him one way or another, nor do I think that “the mainstream media” could somehow speak with one voice that reflects the universal judgment of its members.
Also, I don’t think Glenn Beck was first, was he?
As for your questions, I’ll answer, but define who is included in the MSM first.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 7, 10:23 AM · #
That is maddeningly, ridiculously disingenuous. Can you honestly NOT list what is the mainstream media today? Your answer to ASDF sounds like a gotcha just waiting to pounce.
As to your question about Glenn Beck: that’s really rather small of you. Of course, we all know it was Conor Friedersdorf who first wrote about Van Jones, but…but…wait, who?
— jd · Sep 7, 01:17 PM · #
Conor:
I just noticed this one:
Care to name one who was in a cabinet post or “czar” position? Let’s add another caveat. Name one who whose kookiness was ignored by the press.
And then there’s this one:
I absolutely agree with that. But you seem to have such respect for wonkism and statism that I’m not sure there’s really much of you behind that statement. Oh wait, silly me. You said the “average” American. You’re not including yourself in that group are you? And I am deadly serious with that question. I’m not sure you have much in common with the average American.
— jd · Sep 7, 01:31 PM · #
I would definitely prefer that we restrict the term ‘lynching’ to actual extra-judicial executions. I don’t like it any better when liberals cheapen the term now, than when Clarence Thomas did exactly the same in 1991.
I don’t really care about Van Jones, whose significance has been vastly overrated both by his stalkers and his defenders. But just in the interest of good journalism: it has been widely alleged that Van Jones is active in the truther movement. The normally sane James Joyner actually called him a leader in that movement. But surely no one can be suggesting that a signature, however ill-advised, on a petition, however despicable, makes someone active in a movement, let alone a leader of it.
— kth · Sep 7, 03:50 PM · #
Lots of good stuff here, but some odd stuff as well. Some thoughts:
1.) I understood that Gateway Pundit was the first to find that Van Jones signed the Truther petition, but the right blogosphere has been onto him for months: that he was a communist, that he operated under some weird synthesis of race theory and environmentalism, that he cut an album with that cop killer whose name I keep forgetting. None of this impressed the MSM until recently. I think Beck was the first to take the story from the blogosphere and into the larger public eye, though I could be wrong.
2.) York’s post does a good job of defining the MSM: the networks, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Add the cable networks and you’re set. No fair giving disproportionate weight to FoxNews!
3.) I find this particularly odd.
If anyone in the Bush administration was forced to resign because their views were too radical for the public, I am unaware. But not only is Van Jones resigning in disgrace, but Obama had to withdraw the nomination of Charles Freeman a few months ago, also for way-out-there views (he was the guy who thought the Chinese government didn’t do enough to crack down on the Tiananmen protestors, among other fun opinions). Do I need to rehash Ayers and Wright, while I’m at it?
I agree that there are nuts on all sides, and it is important to emphasize that no party has a monopoly on sanity. But this administration seems unique in the number of nuts it tries to elevate to high-profile positions.
— Blar · Sep 7, 03:51 PM · #
Well, but that’s exactly it. They’re never forced to resign, regardless of their radical views. You openly cast the war in Iraq as Christianity’s battle against Islam? A-Ok. Numerous top Republican operatives and politicians openly wonder about Obama’s true citizenship? Acceptable discourse. You put on diapers and fuck prostitutes on your off-hours? That’s just a different way of displaying character not grounds for stepping down from the Senate. You openly flaunt international law and treaty obligations in order to create a flimsy legal framework that allows for torture and murder of those suspected of “terrorist activities”? Grounds for re-election to the highest office in the land.
But merely suggest that it’s possible that the previous administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks – something that we now know to be absolutely true – and somehow people are shocked – shocked! – to find out that there are people who believe that losing an election doesn’t absolve your movement of all past deeds, and that it’s not merely out of a desire for vengeance that some would want past lawbreaking to be investigated.
There’s nothing at all unique about it. It’s merely that it’s entirely OK to be completely nuts if you’re a Republican. Everything’s Ok if you’re a Republican. It always is.
— Chet · Sep 7, 04:09 PM · #
I’m merely concerned that people are not weighing the good works against the odious statements in this instance.
— Jonathan · Sep 7, 04:35 PM · #
I could try to argue with Chet, get him to cite his sources (What top politicians are birthers? Who has defended David Vitter?), or play the game of how what was actually said differs from the Kos-spun version, or try to explain the difference between a politically aligned representative and an executive appointment, but it would be fruitless and tiresome.
Instead I would like the record to show that on Sep 7, at 12:09 pm, Chet outed himself as a Truther.
— Blar · Sep 7, 04:40 PM · #
Hrm, did I? Or did I just post information released by the Bush White House on the public record? Again, the fact that the Bush Administration had prior warning of the 9/11 attacks is a matter of public record and incontrovertible. Either they were titanic morons or they allowed the attacks to occur for political gain. Oh, but that could “never happen.” They would “never do that.” Why, it’s completely reasonable to believe that the first black president is actually a Kenyan man groomed from birth to seize control of the United States in order to enact a radical agenda from the inside, but the idea that the administration that enacted the Patriot Act, suspended habeas corpus rights and Geneva Convention protections for people implicated in terrorism by nothing more than anonymous phone tips, and engaged in an illegal war of adventure on the basis of manufactured evidence also may have seen warning of an impending attack and said “…you know, maybe we’ll pretend we didn’t see this…” is somehow beyond the pale.
Look, I’m not a nut or a conspiracy theorist. I don’t maintain that anybody but 19 al-Queda members flew 3 airplanes into buildings (and intended to fly a 4th.) I don’t maintain that Bush dynamited the buildings himself. If there’s evidence that I’m completely wrong – that the Bush Administration had zero prior warning of the attacks – I’m completely open to it. It has never been presented, and that was not the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission.
“Chet is a Truther” doesn’t constitute that evidence. It merely constitutes a way for you to dismiss me without actually grappling with my argument. Which is fine, I guess, but let’s be absolutely clear that’s what you’re doing. You have absolutely no idea why I’m wrong, Blar; you’re just convinced that I am.
Who’s the nut, again?
Sen. David Vitter, for one.
— Chet · Sep 7, 05:11 PM · #
I’ve defended Jones to Beck afficiandos because I couldn’t find evidence of any radical views that Jones currently holds, other than “republicans are assholes”. He claims to have been a communist, but people change, and his book has no hints of “militant Marxism” at all. Moreover, he seems to understand that we can create energy independence through market based solutions. The truther stuff is unexcusable. But he applogized and claimed to sign the petition ignorant of its meaning, which I highly doubt.
At least he understands his previously held finge views can hurt the party, unlike a Bachman or Beck who are oblivious to the fact that their current corrosive conspiracy mindset will cause the GOP to eventually explode.
— Chuck · Sep 7, 05:15 PM · #
If you really want to know why the left is pissed this guy resigned take a look at his wikipedia page:
Clearly smart, capable, and accepted by the mainstream. The 911 truther petition was pretty inexcusable and is really the only thing that makes his resignation understandable. His past associations are ideological and should be no more disqualifying than a conservative’s membership in the federalist society or the moral majority. Especially considering his later work and as you note his endorsement from folks like Meg Whitman.
— Mike in the Mountain West · Sep 7, 05:22 PM · #
What did the petition say, exactly?
— Chet · Sep 7, 05:24 PM · #
Why always the knee-jerk equivalency?
There really wasn’t anyone of the profile and credentials in the Bush administration. Jones is a very unique, and impressive, figure.
I don’t know of anyone on the right with his sort of career trajectory. And the only other person on the left who comes close to his skills and beliefs is Obama himself, who was simply able to keep his hands more clean working as an inside man for ACORN, rather than actually organizing communities.
His position was not exactly low-profile either. He was appointed precisely because of his success, which was partly due to many of the opinions he espoused.
It seems that you, Conor, just want him to go because the mainstream wants him to. That sounds pragmatic, but also very arbitrary when you try to explain it as a matter of unacceptable extremism, as if extremism is okay when the ‘mainstream’ or the respectable can be persuaded by it.
Jones may not have had the mainstream appeal Obama has, but that’s because he more clearly says, and actually does, what needs to be said, and sometimes would shoot from the hip.
But I find him a much more charismatic, energetic, and effective leader, partly because he did not compromise and hamstring himself in order to become popular with the white middle class.
Personally I think serving in government would have been a great experience for Van, but I am sure he will be more effective acting as the dynamic multi-tasker he is at the grassroots level.
Jones is not a politician, but a very capable political actor who will probably get more done in the next 8 years than O (who is now starting to show signs of being tied up by his own hedging and the image of a post-partisan he had to sell himself in order to impress worn-out white conservative pundits thirsting for “Burkean” common ground to rest upon as support for their groundless love of hegemony and class privilege).
I’m not saying he is better than Obama because he is more authentic and radical; he’s just more free to actually be what Obama secretly always wished to be. In a way, Obama is more of the martyr to the cause because he became the delegating political figurehead, sacrificing true leadership and action for the need for respectability.
But I have a feeling that one day Jones will be more of a hero to young people and accomplish more for the cause of social justice in the long term than the privileged speech reader Obama, who will likely be relegated to fund-raising, lecture-circuits, tv appearances, and cocktail parties after his term.
And I don’t think Van really takes the Truther stuff as seriously as Chet and others do.
The point was to ask questions, get people disgruntled, and get a movement going.
He certainly believes in change, but chose whatever means were at his disposal to help move us toward it. And because of effective, impressive people like Jones, his movement has been half-successful (see “regime change” in govt).
This is a guy who can talk coherently about policy and political philosophy as easily as he could turn around and actually accomplish things by channeling young impoverished people’s angst, or even run a record label.
I get the fact that the administration has to keep up appearances, but although he is a ‘radical,’ Jones is more clear-sighted and realistic about the positions he espouses and the purposes for which they are espoused, than other appointees, who are only respected as “one of us” by moderate elites because they lack his courage, vision, and leadership skills.
Because they were among the used, rather than one of the users, I am confident that other ‘respectable’ ‘czars’ who will remain in the administration and be defended as sensible and intelligent and practical, even though they actually believed (and maybe still believe) many of the ridiculous things they have espoused over the years.
What’s ironic is that Jones is actually a real pragmatist (not in the fashionable theoretical sense taught in the classroom of finding the easiest way to sustain the status quo and reflect common opinion, but in the sense of knowing and doing what is necessary to move people in the right direction). And yet he is being booted for what he has had to say and do to make change a reality.
The difference is that Van actually took it to the street and used opinions like Trutherism to mobilize people, and got himself arrested for the purpose of justice.
He is being booted because he looks like a true believer and we can’t have weird opinions in the govt if those who hold them seem to actually believe them enough to act on them.
But by the standard you are applying you end up with not just hypocritical moderates who don’t believe what they say to different audiences, you also get some who do have kooky ideas but just lack the courage to do or risk anything real for them.
It’s too bad that sacrificial lambs always have to be the purest, most blameless ones.
— Tsk · Sep 7, 06:06 PM · #
Conor,
You left out the best line of Hamsher’s piece. Namely, that as late as 2007 35% of Democrats agreed with Jones on Bush foreknowledge of the events of 9/11.
“Subsection” indeed.
— Jeremy R. Shown · Sep 7, 06:29 PM · #
While I somewhat agree with the Friedersdorf’s point, I’ll point out that 9/11 trutherism is less crazy and likely less harmful to policy decisions than thinking the earth is 6,000 years old. How many Bush appointees believed that? And how many had to resign for that reason?
— Russell · Sep 7, 06:39 PM · #
I’m not a Truther; nothing I’ve said bears any relationship to Truther claims. My only claim is that, in August of 2001, the President received a daily briefing entitled “bin Laded Determined to Strike Inside the US”, as well as other reports detailing a plot to use airliners as missiles.
These things are true. When did it become beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse to point out true facts?
— Chet · Sep 7, 06:40 PM · #
Your post surprises me. It appears, you consider anyone who has been associated with the radical left, must be evil, forever unfit to hold public office — however qualified he otherwise is for a position. Van Jones, I’d think, is a true role model for many kids from the hood; someone who really believes in the cause of the poor, the disenfrancised, the diempowered.
Sure, he has employed (depending on one’s persuasion) questionable or odious methods in the past. But having realised the futility of his methods, he has come around. And, having championed the creation of green jobs — not to mention his book on Green Economy — I don’t see why he ought not be seen as suitably qualified for the job he was tasked with.
But no, in your mind, he must have gotten the job purely because he is a true believer who has climed the ideological ladder. :sigh: Why such bias?
— Elanjelian · Sep 7, 06:40 PM · #
I’m not a crazy creationist. It would be dangerous to think there could be some deity that is so powerful to fool our scientists. Much safer to think that elected leaders are that cunning and competent.
But I just want to point out that a fossil of a human handprint was found in limestone estimated to be more than 110 million years, a fossilized human finger with just as much, and the aparent discovery of a human footprint that possibly sported a sandal which dates to more than 300 million years ago.
These things are true. When did it become beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse to point out true facts?
It’s not like I’m making any sort of connection or explaining what significance they have. Facts aren’t evidence.
Just putting it out there for no apparent reason whatsoever.
Why do I have to have a reason to state a fact? That’s too much to ask of anyone. If you want to draw conclusions, that’s on you.
I just love raising irrelevant trivia for fun. Did you know, for instance, that charcoal was invented by Henry Ford and Edison, whales are actually mammals and that 9 + 11 = 20, which just happens to be the age Bush was initiated into the skull and bone cult). Interesting, huh?
Why does it have to have a point? If you want to assume I shared my knowledge for some crazy reason or even to ask innocent, harmless questions about what evolutionists truly know or when they knew it, that’s your problem.
Citing random fun facts is always within the bounds of acceptable discourse.
— Honest Q-man · Sep 7, 08:05 PM · #
No, they’re not.
— Chet · Sep 7, 08:40 PM · #
Charlie Johnson over at little green footballs has a series of interesting observations. First—that he has searched really hard for any writing, speaking, attending or etc in Mr Jones’ record to show Truther leanings. Couldn’t find even one. Second—that other people whose signatures appeared on the Truther document that became cause celebre have indicated that much of what the petition says was not on what they originally signed; the Truther portion had been added after they signed it. And third—that the TeaParty Coordinator at the 1st TeaParty in Cincinnati (which seems to have been the one that Beck attended) is on record as being a Truther as well as a Birther.
His conclusion is that Jones and he are sure to agree on almost nothing in American politics but that he’s being railroaded.
— JohnMcC · Sep 7, 09:04 PM · #
Yo Chet, you can’t afford to be this naive, brother.
Don’t deny what doesn’t fit into your world-view just because you lack the imagination to explain it, just like you lack the ability to explain your assertions.
No one said your “fact” that Bush was warned (i.e. received a report about one possible threat) about 9/11 in advance. They just questioned why someone would state something for no reason whatsoever.
But not me, I get it. How can we know the truth if we don’t know all the facts, especially if we blurt them out at random intervals?
And how can we deny we are interested in the truth if we don’t just state a couple disconnected facts we can easily back away from and take no responsibility for what conclusions other draw?
That’s what acceptable discourse is all about.
Like you, I’m just interested in the facts. I love the truth, when it is split up into random, disconnected bite-size nuggets of trivia.
I never contested your irrelevant, non sequitor observation of what is true.
No one denied your own facts.
Bush really did receive that report.
I understand you weren’t saying that had anything to do with anything. That would be crazy.
Why can’t you show the same respect. Be fair to open dialogue.
Facts are facts. 110 million years. That’s what the carbon dating said.
Now that doesn’t mean I’m saying the only way that could be dated that old is because aliens or Bush planted it there long ago. I’m not even saying that some lab assistant made a mistake.
I can’t help it if it blows your the closed doors of your mind wide open and leads you to question the dimensions of the little box of “the explicable” you want to keep the world in.
When did blowing minds become a crime?
Just cuz it doesn’t fit into your reality, saying nuh-uh isn’t really going to make the facts go away.
Face it: there are just some discrepancies in the record that I haven’t heard any satisfactory explanations for.
(And “that’s not a fact” is not an explanation).
If you can’t deal with the facts then don’t raise them. I thought you were a consciousness raiser like me. I guess I was wrong about you – just another enforcer of what’s acceptable to raise.
— Honest Q-man · Sep 7, 09:49 PM · #
I’m not. I’m denying what I know not to be true. There are no human handprints in million year old limestone, no fingers in them, no 25-inch-long sandaled footprints alongside those of dinosaurs.
Those things that you called “facts” are not facts. They’re invention.
No reason whatsoever? What are you talking about? The reason is Van Jones. I would have thought that was obvious. What questions are you referring to, specifically? Could you quote them from this thread?
It’s not incumbent on me to show respect to falsehoods.
Sure. But the specific discrepancies you refer to are mythical. They’re not things that actually exist. I brought up statements that were verifiably true. You’ve pretended that verified falsehoods are fact.
— Chet · Sep 7, 10:26 PM · #
Dear Conor:
Have you actually read closely the President’s autobiography, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”? You don’t give the impression that you are very familiar with it.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 7, 10:57 PM · #
I think Van Jones has his heart in the right place, but, having someone who is an “ex-marxist” and has sympathies for 911 truthers is not a person Obama needs on board.
— George Arndt · Sep 7, 11:07 PM · #
Everything Chet said in his first comment is exactly right.
— Freddie · Sep 7, 11:35 PM · #
Not an ex-Marxist!!! You mean he actually put stock in an eschatological story with chaos, violence, and a utopian destiny? The Right would never… Oh.
Read his full bio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones) – maybe I am just liberal but he sounds like a really decent guy. He held some somewhat extremist views outside of college (isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?) and he signed a petition that raised questions — and very pointedly nothing more — about a period of time that for some reason we are not suppose to question. Other than that he has done a lot of great things and seems perfectly qualified for and most importantly successful in the position.
This is a sad battle to fight, especially now. I don’t see how anyone with a constructive agenda wins anything here. The whole thing sounds a lot like Bill Ayers, except for the bombs. With the advent of digital records of just about everything, we must eventually accept that our best and brightest, whether in personal discovery or principled defense, at times push the limits and offend cultural norms. Do we really want all of our social leaders to be born and bread in nothing but well-tempered moderation?
— wfrost · Sep 8, 01:58 AM · #
Thank God for Glen Beck. I feel better knowing that only someone with impeccable establishment credentials will build the next generation of Potemkin Wind Turbines.
It’s like we’re living inside a political fractal, in which every micro-joke reflects the farcical whole.
— Matt Frost · Sep 8, 02:09 AM · #
<i>— whether radical evangelical views or outside the mainstream foreign policy views or anti-immigrant views or even Smith Point misogynistic views —</i>
I have no clue what ‘Smith Point misogynistic views’ are, but I think I know what ‘mainstream’ ‘reasonable’ etc etc. literati mean when they say ‘anti-immigrant views’. They mean folks who think one or more of the following
1) we should enforce the immigration laws we have
2) that illegal immigrants made their own bed and should pay the consequences, namely having to relocate back home
3) that repeatedly trying the same failed policy — amnesty — in order to solve a problem is the definition of insane
4) that US America has its own culture, rooted very deeply in the past, and is not an oxymoronical ‘nation of immigrants’
5) that allowing millions of low skilled, third world peasants into a 21st century, post industrial economy is real stupid
6) that basing 2/3 of your immigration policy on nepotism is down right anti-American
7) that the just about the best time for improvement in the average American’s condition was during the great immigration cut-off in the middle of the 20th century
8) that we really have very little, if anything, to learn from Somali’s , or Hmong etc, however decent they may be personally
Its pretty amazing that common sense is now considered odious.
— stari_momak · Sep 8, 03:10 AM · #
Chet,
I can’t let this go. You are being disingenuine or really believe some of these “facts” you are trying to claim, but don’t actually take any responsibility for by explaining why you would raise them.
I just want to know if you are being honest or not. Should I consider you a liar or a dupe?
I want to know because I don’t believe that creationists, or believers in aliens for that matter, are as dangerous as Truthers. That’s why I brought up the fossils you can’t even deign to explain any more than your statements. So let me try to take a stab.
First of all, you want evidence that Bush didn’t know 9/11 was going to happen, the burden is on us, but you claim that can just flat out deny the facts I cited without explaining why they are false, or offering me any evidence they are.
Why? Because you don’t respect what you call myths.
Okay, I don’t respect those I call Truthers, but still you protest.
So I’ll try again:
It is lazy, and a waste of time, just denying that weird, inexplicable fossils actually exist because it would be too hard to actually explain why they do or why they were mistakenly dated as older than they are.
Your obvious lack of imagination misleads you. Is everything just either-or for you? Doesn’t fit with your vast knowledge of things and understanding of the world, so throw it out – has to be a myth, not a fact?
I suppose it comforts you simply to call facts myths since you seem to hate to explain statements.
But it doesn’t change the fact that it is true.
Strange fossils have been found, they were dated by people who have degrees. I’m not making it up.
Why is that so hard to believe? Everyone has heard this crap. Don’t you ever watch History channel?
(btw, I notice you don’t even try deny any of the other facts I mentioned. I guess whales being mammals isn’t as threatening to you.)
But fine, like I said, I was just trying to make the same point you were – To paraphrase: “Those on the (blank) can say groundless, stupid things and cherry-pick facts, but when those on the (blank) just raise a totally reasonable question about a verifiable fact they are called dangerous extremists.
It’s just not fair!”
I’m not insisting you save your soul from eternal damnation and accept the fact that Jesus was a caveman. I’m more interested in your “verifiable facts” that you were just raising as part of “acceptable discourse.”
It is odd that in your first post that Freddie loved so much, you suggested Bush had foreknowledge of 9/11, and then after that run away from the statement as if it is a sane observation based on a sober consideration of the facts that you just happened to mention as an example of what should be investigated (just like Bush should have investigated all that foreign fundraising and espionage enabling of his squeaky clean predecessor I guess).
But instead of just saying you mistyped or that you were wrong and not as ignorant as that statement sounded, you dig in and say you were just stating facts, no more, no less, and that you weren’t drawing any conclusions.
But that’s a lie easily corrected by re-reading the first post Freddie loves.
But it’s not as if just stating facts means you are not a truther because that’s what truthers do – dishonestly spit out decontextualized, distorted ‘facts’ then step away and disavow, with the innocence of child just asking obvious questions, as if you’re just stating the whole truth and nothing but, out of a genuine dogged love of the truth.
That may be “acceptable” to you because you think that because republicans are so vile and get away with everything it justifies intimating anything without taking any responsibility for your assertions, but it is not a fact to call that “discourse.”
It is cowardly, and just makes you as bad as your enemies (Bush and Cheney) by using their same tactics.
I am being charitable when I try to assume you’re just knowingly lying when you say “the previous administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.”
But don’t keep saying that it is a fact. It is not. It is not “absolutely true” that they had “knowledge” of this.
Do you know what knowledge is?
And your following backpedal/reformulation of the same tinfoil assertion is not a fact either:
It’s simply not true that if Bush & co. were not morons, then “they allowed the attacks to occur for political gain.”
That really is the stupidest thing I’ve read on this site.
You were caught parroting truther lies and can’t own up to what that makes you.
If you don’t like being outed as a truther then stop repeating truther distortions of irrelevant “facts” that you don’t even want to explain the significance of.
But is it more respectful to think that you already know your posted links don’t say what you claim, or that you are just compounding your dishonesty?
The world is more complex (and mundane) than your truther programmers led you to believe.
Just because there was intelligence about an attack doesn’t mean it should be taken seriously every time or that the president better get information quickly by any means necessary, even torture in order to stop it.
News you can use: there is a lot of vague and specific information every president receives every week about potential and planned attacks.
Is every president a moron who doesn’t read every page himself and acts with some trepidation rather than shutting down all flights until suspects are caught.
But I just have to believe you know that. You are just being disingenuous on purpose, right?
It is too mindblowing for me to accept the fact that you actually think Bush got one report that told him exactly what was going to happen with certainty and he was either too stupid or corrupt to care to do anything about it.
Your statements are just like those who try to blame Clinton for letting 9/11 happen because he didn’t care enough about American lives to stop binLaden even though he had the multiple chances, and personally chose not to go after him, even though he was personally warned, and binladen himself warned us all that alqaeda was going to attack (again), way back in 1997, and 1998 (read your own link again, or once).
Clinton did actually have a chance to have killed or capture binladen and could have gotten information about attacks through inhumane means, but you don’t seem to blame him for it.
I guess I’m just fascinated about this because it isn’t clear if you are just saying things you think someone might believe or if you actually thought any of this through?
For instance, what do you think Bush could have done?
You actually would have supported Bush acting preemptively to nip 9/11 in the bud before any crimes were committed? The guy you blame for suspending habeas corpus?
You expect me to believe that if Bush had violated the law, and our liberal sense of decency, to stop the attacks (the only way it could have happened before the event, since there wasn’t actually any conclusive evidence of any crimes or conspiracy), you would then think he was not a moron or wicked? Not buying it.
Hmmm, surely both Bush and Clinton can’t be morons. So the only other option is that they both chose golf and chose to let it happen.Only if we investigate can we be sure.
Just stating facts and positing invalid conclusions.
Totally acceptable discourse to raise the only possibilities we could imagine to could explain these facts. Nothing deranged or dishonest about that.
I must say I am surprised you aren’t more open to the possibility that all these facts point to: Bush Sr. planted all those fossils while working for the CIA in order to give his son a reason to go to war over oil: in order to find more strange findings supporting God’s divine plan in the oil beds under ancient Babylon.
It’s staring you right in the face. Unless…you’re in on it with them.
Either that or you’re a titanic moron.
— Honest Q-man · Sep 8, 06:03 AM · #
My guess is that most republican administrations wouldn’t be alarmed if an otherwise promising hire also was on the fringes of the birther movement several years ago, except for possible PR fallout.
Similarly, I’m sure the Obamanauts are not particularly concerned by Truthers in their midst, except, again, for PR fallout.
I’m a little more concerned by the idea that the guy at the center of the Obama “Green Jobs” theory knows nothing about economics. He’s like the opposite of the Obama team working in banking or health care.
AFAICT, the green jobs/minority jobs overlap, to Van Jones, is a combination of wishful thinking and a tool to direct more government money to his preferred constuency.
— J Mann · Sep 8, 03:23 PM · #
It’s not my obligation to disprove your statements, but rather for you to prove them. You’ve provided no evidence for your supposed unexplainable fossils; as it happens, I’m no stranger to the creationism “debate” so I all ready happen to know that the “anomalies” to which you refer are creationist fictions. I already know they don’t exist.
I’m under no obligation to prove that, however, just because you mention them. It’s incumbent on you to provide support for your own contentions.
I didn’t say you were making it up. I know you didn’t make it up, because I’ve encountered people repeating these fictions before. You didn’t make anything up – you’re just misinformed. The fossils you were told about, or read about – don’t exist. They’re creationist fictions. Lies, basically, which you unfortunately believed.
Um, no, it’s not. Why would I find that threatening?
But I didn’t say that at all. I didn’t say anything of the kind, and I’ve not retreated from the contention that Bush was warned about 9/11, because I proved that he had been. It’s a matter of public record, now, that he was.
— Chet · Sep 8, 03:31 PM · #
Chet,
Thanks for admitting the fact that the anomalies exist. I don’t know why that was so hard. It’s as if you think I was trying to say more than that for some reason.
And you keep referring to “fictions” and creationism, but as I said I am not a creationist because that would be crazy.
And I made no suggestions about the anomalies either. Just stated the fact that they exist. I have no idea why anyone would jump the gun and conclude more than what I stated from some innocent citing of facts.
But you still say you just are saying “Bush was warned about 9/11.”
Saying that, in the way you have, is exactly what makes you a truther.
It is all y’all are interested in – just bits and fragments – not the whole truth, or context or the actual historical record; just spreading memes and around that are not false, and can be expressed so vaguely it couldn’t be disproved (like ‘Clinton was warned about 9/11,’ or ‘we were all warned about 9/11’).
But, of course, you continue to distort the truth of your own statements if you just use your scroll bar (usually on the right side).
But no worries, I’ll recount your own words again:
At first, in your post that Freddie endorsed, you tried to be more specific: “the previous administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.”
Whether you believe that, or just parrot it as an interesting suggestion, you are a Truther.
But you didn’t want to explain or retract this (and still don’t – denial is easier). You can’t answer any questions I asked.
Instead you keep arguing against creationist fictions that I never stated.
Then you went further and said that since they received the warning they are either morons or “they allowed the attacks to occur for political gain.”
You seem to think you “proved” this, I guess because you had a link.
But your link failed to prove anything more than that Bush had the same sort of “intelligence” speculation that all presidents receive.
So, instead of pleading you to try to defend or explain yourself, or why your think saying these things does not make you a Truther, I’ll just quote you again:
“It’s not my obligation to disprove your statements, but rather for you to prove them.”
You have implied Bush was too purposely complacent pre-9-11, but also condemned him for taking intelligence reports too seriously after 9/11, by suspending “habeas corpus rights and Geneva Convention protections for people implicated in terrorism by nothing more than anonymous phone tips.”
So which is it? He knew about rumors of one attack, but thought it better to take future ones much more seriously? Why would he have done that? Is it really only because he is a moron or did he allow “the attacks to occur for political gain.” Or both?
— Honest Q-man · Sep 8, 05:40 PM · #
I’m a little more concerned by the idea that the guy at the center of the Obama “Green Jobs” theory knows nothing about economics.
Well, considering the utter mess that all the wonks with fancy economics Ph.Ds got us in, maybe the problem is that we really don’t know anything about economics.
— Travis Mason-Bushman · Sep 8, 08:22 PM · #
But they don’t exist, and I never “admitted” anything of the sort. When are you going to stop completely misrepresenting me in your replies?
But they don’t exist. There are no “walking with dinosaurs” footprints, there are no handprints or fingers in million-year-old limestone.
But that’s not the position of the “Truthers.” Their position is that the Bush Administration likely planned and executed the 9/11 attacks, then blamed it on al-Queda, as part of a false-flag maneuver to drum up support for an unpopular president.
I don’t contend that, and I never have, which is why I’m not any kind of “Truther.”
Your posts are incomprehensible as a result of your distortions, because I don’t know what you think you’re talking about when you say “denial.” I have not at any point denied that I believed that Bush was warned about 9/11, because – again – that’s completely true. Proven by the public record.
Only a great idiot would think that these illegal actions were taken to improve national security in the light of “intelligence reports.” So, again, the way you construe my position here is an utter distortion.
You call yourself “Honest.” When are you going to start responding to me honestly?
— Chet · Sep 8, 10:02 PM · #
I enjoy your writing. I have to be honest. It’s refreshing to get away from the extremes for awhile. However, I must respond. First Van Jones was hired to help stimulate and rebuild our economy to be more environmentally friendly, and for that position, he is most qualified. Yale graduate and award winning author. You know how radical those Yale Law students get. He was remarkably qualified and he could have done a lot to change the way people view our environment. He was probably the only person who could inspire even lower class people to care about such things. Moreover, labeling him as a marxist is completely unfair. It discriminates based on culture where such ideas are much more common. If you grew up with very little, or continually saw your mother denied coverage or opportunity, you may have been a little more in favor of a more “fair” state. If he was continuing to speak out in favor of such radical ideas I would oppose him, but everybody searches for answers when there young. If educating and following other philosophies helped him cope when he was younger, more power to him. The one incident that truly deserved criticism was the 9-11 truther signature. In no realm was that a reasonable thing for him to do, so if you fault him for anything, let it be that. You don’t need to drag is name through the mud. He’s done more in his life for other people than you or I will probably ever do, and he should be held as an example encouraging people to work with the government for change rather than against it, a lesson a lot of republicans could use right now.
— JH · Sep 9, 02:26 AM · #
What did the petition say, exactly? I still haven’t heard.
— Chet · Sep 9, 05:00 AM · #
This is a great piece. Very thought provoking. I like the sort of ending that leaves it opn to personal input. Makes it work for just about everyone I think. Nicely done! I’ll subscribe.
— cheap supra shoes · Sep 9, 07:28 AM · #
Chet,
I never said anything about walking with dinosaurs. “When are you going to stop completely misrepresenting me in your replies?”
You seem mad that you think I believe creationist fictions but not yours. You still keep clinging to the belief that you are different.
You call my posts incomprehensible, but I’m just repeating everything you say and trying to put it together. Maybe you need to self-examine.
But come on, Chet…
Do I really have to point out at this point that I am just razzing you with honest questions about fossils at this point?
You really don’t see that I am just making a strained point that you are as crazy as those you instinctually lash out against as myth-mongers? That your ‘evidence’ you keep citing proves as little of what you have claimed as their stories and photos of hammers in coal prove God made everything out of nothing in 6 days?
It is plain that although you lack the courage to admit it, you are a truther, and it comes from a delusion that there are bad guys with inscrutable, dark motives who will sacrifice 3000 lives just for the chance to fight for oil and kidnap and torture people just for fun.
But instead of owning up to what you are, you want to redefine what a Truther is.
That’s because it is a cancer that has become so widespread fewer and fewer are able to identify it.
I sort of thought you didn’t know what truthers were.
Your definition might just be ignorance.
But the distinction you make is from truthers themselves, and actually is akin to the distinction between creationists and those who believe in intelligent design. i.e. a distinction without a difference.
Trutherism is not just those few kooks who said Bush planned and executed it.
It also includes the kooks like you, manipulated as much as the creationists you still can’t help but disdain.
You can at least see why you are lumped in with all the other truthers you now define incorrectly define, right?
You see why you are a truther even if you lack the integrity to admit it?
Whether you think Bush and Cheney flew the planes and parachuted out at the last minute, or he asked the Saudis to do it for him, or if you just think “the previous administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks,” but still “they allowed the attacks to occur for political gain” the conclusion is the same:
Bush is culpable for 9/11 because he either enabled or allowed it to happen.
If that’s your suggestion – and it was – you just might be a truther (or one of their easily misled stooges)
Sure, if those who spread the cancer of trutherism could get some to think Bush personally planted explosives in buildings and controlled the planes by remote control, that would be fine.
But they’ll also take those like you who want to jump to the conclusion that because someone (many people) knew about a plot involving planes flying into buildings, then Bush knew it would definitely happen, could have stopped it, but wanted it to happen (so he could blame those who warned that it would happen).
Truthers are all united on the fact that Bush is to blame, somehow (doesn’t matter how – he was warned, he paid for it – he is an accomplice is the ‘only suggested’ truth of truthers).
They easily get others like you to spread their message as you have done, because it all follows quite logically if you accept the premise that Bush is evil and has no interest in American lives or security because only naive idiots would believe otherwise.
If you believe that, if you actually believe the hyperbole of propagandists who just wanted to foment hate and panic during the Bush years instead of any sober consideration of the boring possibility that the we aren’t in a movie and mistakes were made because incompetent people are constantly elected and appointed in an imperfect inefficient system all the time, then you are not an “idiot” you are just deranged.
I see now yo will not be budged from your positions because your it is indisputable gospel to you that Bush had no good intentions and would never care about or act for the nation’s security.
You also think people are idiots or ignorant who assume otherwise – that maybe, there are alot of threats, or perceived and potential threats reported to the president all the time, and that it is usually difficult to do anything about it, especially if you care about law, public opinion, or morality.
I remember when conspiracy theories made sense and had some basis in actual human psychology and reality.
— Honest Q-man · Sep 9, 04:52 PM · #
“What did the petition say, exactly? I still haven’t heard.”
Too hilarious. Are you serious? You really don’t know? You were being honest when you misdefined what you think truthers are? Your not just covering your tracks?
The petition said nothing that any sober, reasonable citizen with sound judgment such as yourself wouldn’t have signed.
That 2004 petition had asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officers had allowed the attacks to occur.
That’s all. Sound familiar at all?
See, the truthers are just asking questions. They would never be so reckless to say that they know that “the previous administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks,” but still “they allowed the attacks to occur for political gain.” You said that. You make the leap they don’t.
They just want some investigations into these very serious allegations.
So I guess you are right. You didn’t out yourself, technically.
You aren’t a truther, in a way (just their tool). They, like Van Jones does now, would disavow you as much as they disavow them.
A movement has to distance itself from nutters (even if its each other) if it is going to be taken seriously.
— Honest Q-man · Sep 9, 04:57 PM · #
But you’re not repeating me. You’re not even quoting me. You’re simply misrepresenting me.
I don’t think that the Bush Administration knew 9/11 would be as bad as it was. I think they knew an attack would be imminent, and instead of taking the steps to get to the bottom of it, said to themselves “you know, another minor bomb in some shopping mall somewhere might be just the thing we need to swing people over to our agenda. Let’s pretend that we didn’t really see this warning.”
I’m not a Truther, after all.
The fact that he was the President at the time, and therefore responsible for the nation’s defense – that’s just coincidence, to you? No blame or responsibility at all can be laid at his feet for 9/11?
Seriously? And you think I’m the nut?
It’s impossible to reason with you; you argue out of nothing but blind partisanship. I’ve never met a more dishonest individual in my life, truly.
— Chet · Sep 9, 05:09 PM · #
‘Q’ stands for quote:
“But you’re not repeating me. You’re not even quoting me.” -Chet
“the previous administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks” -Chet
“they allowed the attacks to occur for political gain.” -Chet
“I think they knew an attack would be imminent, and instead of taking the steps to get to the bottom of it, said to themselves ‘you know, another minor bomb in some shopping mall somewhere might be just the thing we need to swing people over to our agenda. Let’s pretend that we didn’t really see this warning.’” -Chet
“That 2004 petition had asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officers had allowed the attacks to occur.” -Fact
“I’m not a Truther, after all.” -Chet
“It’s impossible to reason with you; you argue out of nothing but blind partisanship. I’ve never met a more dishonest individual in my life, truly.” -some nut
— Honest Q-man · Sep 9, 06:40 PM · #
“The fact that he was the President at the time, and therefore responsible for the nation’s defense – that’s just coincidence, to you? No blame or responsibility at all can be laid at his feet for 9/11?”
Like I said, more than once, I am certain that Bush and those under him, and those who remain under Obama, are not gods who know exactly what will happen or what needs to be done about it.
You speak as if you think the suggestion that alqaeda was going to attack was the only thing in the report, or that it was the only intelligence report ever written with dire warnings and possible attacks by all sorts of groups.
No one at the time called for bush to hunt down and stop every single threat to the U.S. whether rumored or not. Nor should they have. It would have rightly seemed reckless, paranoid, and stupid.
He responded to the intelligence report the way Clinton responded, and the way Obama thinks we should respond to such intelligence: with skepticism and caution and prudent hesitancy.
Yes, Bush didn’t do anything to stop it. Everyone knows that.
But no one would have done anything.
But you, like your fellow truthers insist on this being something we should “blame” him for, as if acting normally is worthy of investigations. As if every American killed anywhere, or the bombings by the ALF, which I ‘m sure someone in his administration had some vague warning of, since I could have predicted them, since Obama took over is his fault, and he should be tried as a co-conspirator who let it happen. Or Clinton’s failure to lock up McVeigh as soon as the FBI established his identity and intent makes him responsible for the OKC bombing.
What a ridiculous thing to say.
Your reason for insisting that Bush alone is guilty is that Bush acted like anyone would have only because he thought he could make some political gain from it, (they thought something like “perhaps if one of these vaguely described threats came about we could launch wars that will make us look like heroes and make oil cheaper. Let’s not round up any suspects and question them, but let it happen so we look good! Yee haw!”)
In other words your “evidence” says nothing except that bush knew what Clinton (and everyone who read the news) knew – some sort of attack was planned
It only indicates that Bush should be “blamed” for these attacks if we define ‘hearing vague threats’ as ‘having certain knowledge,’ and we presume like you that it is impossible that there could be “coincidences” like someone is president at the exact same time that some planes just happen to attack our buildings with plane and that only a nut would believe otherwise.
Of course we’d also have to presume, like you seem to, that presidents are all-powerful and all-knowing, and bush is an raving madman who had only evil intentions to kill for the sake of some vague political gain, like more donations or a bump in the polls.
Is that right? Is that how you think things work?
Is that how you think everyone thinks? Like a lunatic? Like you?
Gosh, I guess it’s all very possible, but only if we also thought it was all created 6000 years ago and governed by a god with incapable of good plot or character development.
— Honest Q-man · Sep 9, 07:09 PM · #
Honest Q-man, you’ve fought the good fight, man, and you managed to bring to light the fact that Chet is a 9/11 Truther. That’s something I hadn’t known. So . . . Chet’s a 9/11 Truther and a Trig Truther. If he’d only confess to us that he’s skeptical about the moon landing (or the lone gunman) we could have a trifecta!
— Kate Marie · Sep 10, 02:15 AM · #
Um, no. Not a “Truther.” I’ve been more than clear about that.
— Chet · Sep 11, 03:54 AM · #
I know, you’re jus’ askin’ questions and statin’ facts. I get it, Chet.
LOL!
— Kate Marie · Sep 11, 05:10 AM · #