"Taking Responsibility"
I found Freddie’s post that criticized Ross Douthat and demanded that conservatives take responsibility for the Bush Administration’s failures… well, incoherently argued (though well-written enough that I didn’t realize it until I read through it twice). I delve into details here.
Well, sure, it’s hard to itemize the levels of goofy here; I cracked up when he painted the column’s title as Douthat’s last straw, since as far as I can tell the columnists don’t write those titles.
But I’ve made this point before. Freddie seems to think any conservative’s criticism of Obama — and who a “conservative” is seems to be fluid – is invalid because George W. Bush sucked so bad, and as I’ve pointed out, it’s the dumbest argument ever. In fact I think that you, Conor, are wasting time drawing the line between conservatism and Bush. So what if there is no line? So what if you cheered every stupid Bush policy? The fact is if Obama comes forward with a dumb policy, and you criticise it, that’s a good thing, and if Douthat thinks, as I think, that giving Obama the Nobel prize was a hell of a stupid idea matched only by Obama’s accepting it, then dammit, he should go ahead and write that, and people who think Douthat has interesting ideas would be well advised to read it and think about it, even if Douthat personally called out for the abandonment of NOLA. Freddie falls back on the “but Bush was so bad” argument every time Obama does something very hard to defend.
I’d like to hope the Bush standard doens’t really set the bar for the American presidency.
— Sanjay · Oct 13, 05:43 PM · #
I have been thinking about a point that turns out to be related to Sanjay’s.
At some point, one of the uses of an opposition is to get someone to point out the flaws you are too blind to see. It’s sadly predictable that many Dems were hell-on-leather to point out all Bush’s arrogations of executive power and that most of them have lost all interest in the issue when it one of their own holding the whip hand. The same holds true for the Republicans.
But that doesn’t mean that the Dems were wrong to point out Bush’s flaws, even if they wouldn’t be bothered by similar flaws in Clinton’s or Obama’s Presidency. And it doesn’t mean that the Republicans are wrong to point out Obama’s flaws. That’s more or less how an opposition works, and it’s often a good thing that it does.
I think it’s healthy to ask questions — What do you think Bush did wrong? Did you support and/or vote for Bush, and if so, are you sorry? Who do you think is responsible for Katrina? But that’s as far as I would go in Freddie’s direction.
— J Mann · Oct 13, 06:01 PM · #
As usual, Conor, you take responsibility for… nothing. You stand for nothing but what you don’t stand for. I know everything about what you aren’t responsible for, and nothing about what you are. And you only grow more self-satisfied in that position as time goes on. I wonder, I really do, what could ever knock you from your smug withdrawal; as it stands, you are a very proud man on a very small hill.
Freddie falls back on the “but Bush was so bad” argument every time Obama does something very hard to defend.
That is not, in fact, my argument, as nearly a hundred commenters have realized. It is in fact precisely that Conor insists on reducing any criticism of him or the right into this caricature that demonstrates his inability to wrestle with the consequences of his painfully easy and utterly shiftless abdication of the very notion of responsibility.
By the way— the easy, cowardly thing for Obama to have done would have been to decline the award.
— Freddie · Oct 13, 06:17 PM · #
What do you take responsibility for, Freddie?
— J Mann · Oct 13, 06:22 PM · #
The classy, decent thing of Obama to do would’ve been to decline the award.
— Sanjay · Oct 13, 06:31 PM · #
Freddie is a shriveled fool writing notes from the underground. Best to let him be.
That said, Douthat’s column is, how you say, ah yes . . . unessential.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 13, 06:35 PM · #
Why does anyone dignify Freddie with a response? His main claim to fame is being a jerky commenter on various conservative blogs. He’s a hack.
— BrianF · Oct 13, 06:37 PM · #
“The classy, decent thing of Obama to do would’ve been to decline the award.”
And if he’d immediately done that, most of the very same critics would be ripping him for his arrogance and grandstanding.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 13, 06:41 PM · #
Ah, but what conservatism are you defending, Conor? There appear to be as many conservatisms as there are conservatives. The same could be said of liberalism, for sure, but I don’t really see how one can chastise Freddie for conflating Bush fils with all things conservative when the very concept is so very nebulous.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Oct 13, 06:44 PM · #
Mike, You’re making a variant of the Freddie error. It’s not about his critics: sure, Limbaugh will blast the guy if he saves a baby from a fire. But it’s still what the classy, decent thing to do would’ve been: especially, as I pointed out before, given that he shafted the Dalai Lama on the day they gave him the Nobel. You may be right that there was no political gain. So?
— Sanjay · Oct 13, 06:47 PM · #
What do you take responsibility for, Freddie?
To varying degrees, the failings and missteps of President Obama, the Democratic party and the project of American liberalism.
The real danger for someone like Conor is what we’ve seen from him in the last year, that you become this Teflon pundit who has drawn the lines of responsibility around himself so tightly that you become merely a disconnected mouthpiece for your version of righteousness, with no connection whatsoever to a reality that could humble you, compel you to change your ways or lead you to understand the petty hypocrisies we all have.
I don’t see anyone defending Douthat analogizing Hurricane Katrina to Obama winning a Nobel prize. And it’s a good thing you shouldn’t. That is part of this whole mess, that people can have such little perspective about what constitutes crisis and scandal. It is most assuredly not merely saying “Bush did X” but rather asking why it is that the scandals of Democrats are about things that seem so trivial and so little damaging to the country in the context of Republican scandals. At what point do thinking people say, “perhaps the responsible thing for me to do is to cease self-identifying with terms that are used for self-identification by such a vast array of fuckups and charlatans”? How far does Andrew Sullivan try to push the stalled out car of conservatism and the GOP before he realizes that perhaps the prudent thing would be to swallow his pride and get in a different goddamn car? That is a question that is both simple and wise and I don’t apologize for saying it.
And, you know, there is a whole slew of Republicans still working in Washington DC, and I don’t see many people rushing to defend their behavior, policies or vision. So are they, too, not the responsibility of any existing conservatives or Republicans? Can we just slough off ideological and partisan commitment so casually and so often that we can all just say, “Don’t blame me, I only voted for the guy”? How long will I be able to criticize people who voted for a President Pawlenty or Jindal or Palin if they turn out to be poor presidents? Or is it really the case that you can make no inferences whatsoever from what people call shared ideological conviction and we are each of us only responsible for the tiny, tidy and self-satisfied islands of idiosyncratic politics that Conr seems to enjoy residing on so much?
As far as letting me be— I write some stuff. Some people read it. Some of them post comments. When Conor engages I engage back. If you don’t like it, just don’t read it. Not hard.
— Freddie · Oct 13, 06:50 PM · #
Freddies point, at least in part, is that at some point the catastrophic failure of the modern conservative project has to cast doubt on the viability of the entire ideology driving it. It’s fine to firewall off failures here and there—katrina to bush and FEMA, iraq to a sect of neoconservatives, etc etc. But when he buck is passed again and again, for every thing that goes wrong in a long line of things going wrong, you really have to wonder. You needs to at least raise the question of whether there is something deeply and possibly irreparably dysfunctional in the heart of American conservatism.
That reckoning just hasn’t come, and it doesn’t look like it will. Ross Douthat, who made his name talking about the need for that reckoning, seems to have lost most of his passion for the idea as soon as it was possible for him to start nitpicking a democrat. And that’s a damn shame.
I do think Freddy is too hard on Conor, who seems to be doing about as honest and forthright a job as anyone could hope for, given his political position.
— salacious · Oct 13, 06:52 PM · #
Freddie writes:
“As usual, Conor, you take responsibility for… nothing. You stand for nothing but what you don’t stand for. I know everything about what you aren’t responsible for, and nothing about what you are. And you only grow more self-satisfied in that position as time goes on.”
In other words, he traffics again in demonstrably false assertions. I take responsibility for all the positions I’ve advocated in my writing — and there are plenty! A quick glance at The American Scene archives, a mere portion of my writing, reveals all manner of positive positions I’ve taken.
So how about correcting that factual error, Freddie, and reformulating your argument so that it is grounded in something other than inaccurate claims.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Oct 13, 06:59 PM · #
Yes! Finally we’re getting to the realization that both parties and ideologies are messed up — welcome home libertarian brothers and sisters. Give me a hug, Freddie, you big, crazy, galoot, you.
— mike farmer · Oct 13, 07:07 PM · #
Conservatism has become just like communism; its adherents defy the relevance of unflattering events by insisting that a genuine attempt at concretizing the ideology has never been made.
— Freddie · Oct 13, 07:14 PM · #
Seriously, I agree with Conor. All we can take responsibility for is our positions. This is not some totalitarian society where I’m nothing but an element of a group with my identity wrapped up in whatever the group says or does. We all have our beliefs, and they don’t always match perfectly with some party platform, and certainly not with any particular gang in power which can off on insane tangents, unless we’re partisan puppet-freaks who have no individuality.
Freddie is obviously mad that he no longer has the upper hand now that Obama has been revealed. He wants everyone to feel so guilty for Bush that they remain silent about Obama.
What I want to know is who is going to take responsibility for Olympia Snowe?
— mike farmer · Oct 13, 07:23 PM · #
Freddie is obviously mad that he no longer has the upper hand now that Obama has been revealed. He wants everyone to feel so guilty for Bush that they remain silent about Obama.
How about just feeling guilty for the existing Republican party leadership? Who’s aboard the John Boehner express?
— Freddie · Oct 13, 07:26 PM · #
“Conservatism has become just like communism; its adherents defy the relevance of unflattering events by insisting that a genuine attempt at concretizing the ideology has never been made.”
How juvenile. Grow up.
I’m not aboard the Boehner Express — that would be crazy. Boo, Boehner, boo! However, I’ll take responsibility for Boehner if you’ll take responsibility for Pelosi.
— mike farmer · Oct 13, 07:31 PM · #
I am responsible for the Iraq War. I bought it hook line and sinker; I advocated it publicly, I even bought the playing cards. It was me, and for that I apologize. My bad, lesson learned. The ‘W’ on my car is a scarlet letter.
I’m also responsible for the continued prosperity of Lynchburg, TN, and I might even be responsible for Transformers 2. I’m not sure.
Except, now that I think about it, I voted for Gore in 2000, Harold Ford Jr. in 2006 and Obama in 2008, so maybe I’m not responsible for the war after all. Maybe I get credit for the surge and the improved diplomacy of Bush’s second term without having to hold all the baggage of the first. And I never even saw the second Transformers.
Anyway, according to Arrow there is no logicality between my preferences and the outcomes of the democratic process. The tension between fairness and transitivity renders democratic decisions de facto meaningless, particularly on big important issues (as William Riker demonstrated in his paper “Social Choice Theory and Constitutional Democracy”). Formally, I’m not responsible for shit (except maybe Lynchburg).
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 13, 07:38 PM · #
i actually like ross, a lot, and enjoy reading many of his columns. i’m furthest thing from an obama apologist (though pretty much subscribe to the liberal project he’s attempting to put forth), but ross’s most recent column was by far the most ungenerous, almost intentionally poisonous, thing i’ve seen him write in a long, long time. perhaps even ever. i honestly thought he wasn’t being serious.
— ron · Oct 13, 07:40 PM · #
“But it’s still what the classy, decent thing to do would’ve been”
Only from one perspective. From another it would be spitting in the face of the Nobel committee in a vain display of self-righteousness.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 13, 08:52 PM · #
If you accept Mark Thompson’s summary of Freddie’s argument—
“Individually, each of the various forms of conservatism can present a viable philosophy of governance such that no individual strain of conservatism can bear the brunt of the blame for conservatism’s failings. Collectively, however, the need to keep each strain within the tent leaves conservatism as a movement incapable of governing well on the national level based on the issues this country faces at this moment.”
—you realize that maybe the problem that Freddie has with someone like Conor (or Brooks or Sullivan (?) or sometimes Douthat) is that his positions are close enough to what several of the incompatible-together “individual strains” of conservatism view as liberalism, so he might as well get in the liberal car (“governing well” should outweigh relatively minor stuff like “incremental change”). I don’t think he’s altogether wrong about that. One of the problems with the “goddamn car” with regard to Douthat is that – even though he takes a lot of flak from the alternative Right – he’s a practicing Catholic (I think) and could never sign up with the Democratic platform.
I don’t understand why either Matoko’s switching teams or Freddie’s “goddamn car” are viewed as actual options for the “individual strains” of conservatism that Thompson mentions (they’re just not, so people get annoyed), but they do become more persuasive as the pundits themselves become more ideologically fluid in their reading of rhetoric and policy.
— T. Sifert · Oct 13, 09:23 PM · #
T. Sifert —
Your comment rings partially true, and I would be interested to see if Freddie agrees with your theory about his “problem” with Conor. I think you are also very perceptive about Douthat.
But I also see a more fundamental, less ideological problem here. Some people think that everyone has to choose sides, and if you’re not on our team, you’re on the other team. Freddie seems to fall within that category. This is a also a common position among conservatives these days (see, e.g., all the people kicked off the bus in the past year as “RINOs”). Others — like Conor — seem to think they shouldn’t have to play on a team at all.
In every area of life, including this one, these two types of people can’t stand each other.
— Jay Daniel · Oct 13, 10:44 PM · #
Jay,
That is a keen observation.
— Conor friedersdorf · Oct 13, 11:01 PM · #
Jay – “Others — like Conor — seem to think they shouldn’t have to play on a team at all.”
I think you’re right about that, but the question then becomes whether political action can ever be perceived as the “play” of no team at all. Reihan Salaam’s post on Mayor Bloomberg is really interesting in that sense:
“One big problem in America’s biggest cities is that partisan elections give Democrats an effective political monopoly. Because voters rely on partisan affiliation to determine their votes, they tend to vote for Democrats in both national and local elections, despite the fact that the mix of issues at the local level is very different by definition. That’s a shame. Cities like New York and Los Angeles would be far better off if you had a coalition of public-sector unions and liberal activists competing against a coalition of led by small business owners and homeowners, with both coalitions consisting primarily of voters who backed Barack Obama in 2008.”
http://agenda.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjdjZDJlZDgxYzFmM2QxMTRjMTIzNWMwNjM2YmI1ZTI=
— T. Sifert · Oct 13, 11:23 PM · #
That’s probably not true. But, you know, if you’re criticizing my team, and only my team, you’re probably not on my team. And doesn’t it pretty much have to be about teams? I mean, how well are the libertarians doing for themselves these days?
— Chet · Oct 13, 11:59 PM · #
T. and Chet — It’s cool how your posts work together.
I think you might consider Arnold Schwarzenegger as an example of someone trying to accomplish political action as a party/team of 1. It hasn’t worked very well for him. on the other hand, I don’t think Conor (or Will Wilkinson, for example) sees his project as “political action.” And I agree libertarians haven’t accomplished much political action because of their refusal to join one of the teams, but I would suggest that we can see libertarian influence in both parties. So maybe the answer is that there is a real role for non-team members, but it is necessarily limited, and if you try to accomplish political action as an independent, non-team member, you’re going to get crushed by both sides.
I also thought Reihan’s post was interesting. Reihan’s point seems to be that politics would work better if we didn’t think of it as two monolithic opposing teams, but lots of little teams that form different loose alliances based on self-interest depending on the political unit in question (federal, state, local). The only thing is, I think this already happens. In city politics, you end up with pro-business, pro-development democrats, pro-labor, pro-welfare services democrats, etc. You can see that pretty clearly here in San Francisco.
— Jay Daniel · Oct 14, 12:53 AM · #
“I mean, how well are the libertarians doing for themselves these days?”
We sleep well at night.
— mike farmer · Oct 14, 01:17 AM · #
I thought the first paragraph of Conor’s post was interesting. He wrote that he missed the fact that Freddie’s post was incoherent because it was so well written. I have little doubt I would have done the same thing (though there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have seen the incoherence of Freddie’s post). I’m not exactly sure what to think of that.
That won’t keep me from sharing some random thoughts, however.
Freddie’s writing is the poster child for style over substance. If it sounds good and logical then it must be. Just like Barack, it’s not what he says, it’s how he says it.
Can the converse be true? Just because it’s not well-written, or just because it doesn’t sound good, can it still be true?
This reminds me of a post a while back about the contributors at TAS wanting to be Alan Tate (whoever the hell he is) rather than Milton Friedman—writing well and being appreciated by other writers is more important than the actual ideas being espoused.
Style over substance: Keith Olbermann versus Rush Limbaugh. Olbermann is doing ESPN football on Sunday nights. He does that very well. I was trying to imagine Rush doing what Olbermann does and I don’t think he could do it as well. Olbermann’s style is tremendous and he is truly gifted. But when he ventures into the world of ideas, (Countdown with Keith Olbermann) he is completely out of his area of expertise. His ideas are garbage. But he says them so forcefully and with such style.
What does all of this say about Conor’s whole shtick of public discourse? I mean, if Freddie can go on for pages with much sound and fury, all the while being incoherent, doesn’t that just increase your desire for someone who can cut through all the bullshit with a few well-chosen words? Just as an example, Sarah Palin’s use of the words death panel. It was hyperbole, a rhetorical device, roundly excoriated by everyone here as being untruthful. Well no, there are no death panels, per se. But if it it was so untruthful why was that provision in HR 3200 removed? There was enough truth in what she said to galvanize people to action.
— jd · Oct 14, 01:18 PM · #
Freddie wrote:
I guess that’s what this whole post is about: feeling guilty for something that we really have little power over. But does anyone else think it’s really stupid to feel guilty about Republican party leadership? Isn’t it just plain meaningless and fruitless and hopeless to believe, as Freddie wrote above, that he’s responsible for:
In this case, Freddie is the poster child for typical liberal guilt. I’ve been there. I grew up. I had to or I would have killed myself. This smells of liberal guilt and the martyr complex.
— jd · Oct 14, 01:40 PM · #
“This smells of liberal guilt and the martyr complex.”
All that’s lacking is the image of the back of his hand over his forehead with a tortured look on his face, exclaiming in his best Shakespearean voice “Oh, what hath we wrought!”
— mike farmer · Oct 14, 02:02 PM · #
jd, farmer, that’s unfair. Look, nobody is less clear than I am that Freddie is a pussy. But making that some kind of emblem of “liberal guilt,” whatever them is or that are, is goofy overstretch.
There is a tradition — I’d like to think that I and many of the New Dem generation embraced that tradition — of liberal engagement. I’ll “take responsibility” for a certain amount of stuff whether done by conservatives or liberals in that I’ll get off my ass and pick some problems and devote my time and effort to remedy them (and by this I do not mean I’ll bitch and bitch and bitch and I generally do not mean, I’ll go to some damn protest). That is part of a liberal tradition and it’s something Obama appealed to I think with ideas of national service. It is a sense of individuals carrying a burden of responsibility to, I suppose, “fix the world” and it probably leads naturally to a certain expansive sense of government. But most of the people in that tradition are at worst “happy warriors,” and if there’s a buch of whiners out there transfixed in agony and clad in hair shirts, or wondering why conservatives aren’t so transfixed and so clad — well, don’t throw “liberalism” in that briar patch.
— Snajay · Oct 14, 02:15 PM · #
I’m not throwing liberalism in the batch — just Freddie.
— mike farmer · Oct 14, 02:19 PM · #
Pardon my post with no one in the middle, but the problem with Freddie and other progressives like him is that they don’t like their strawmen (strawwomen) to have brains.
— mike farmer · Oct 14, 02:45 PM · #
Sanjay, I demand that, as a liberal, you take responsibility for Freddie. Your refusal to take responsibility for people who use the same word as you do to describe their political philosophy shocks and horrifies me. ;-P
— J Mann · Oct 14, 02:56 PM · #
I will take the undeserved liberty of suggesting that Freddie may have been getting at something like the following:
When an administration or a political campaign keeps complaining (or keeps conceding) that it is having trouble “getting its message out there,” we all know that means that it’s just failing.
Talking about how conservatives need to reject offesnive talk radio, or talking about how conservatives need some kind of abstract renewal of their policy agenda, or talking about how conservatives need a cogent new way of talking about their core principles, is the whizbang 2000s version of saying that conservatives are having trouble getting their message across. FAIL.
What needs to happen is that conservatives need to think hard about whether some actual conservative policies aren’t in need of reconsideration. Bruce Bartlett, for instance, says that maybe conservatives ought to think about raising taxes from time to time. Maybe he’s right or wrong about that particular issue, but he’s putting some actual policy chips on the policy table. That’s worth doing.
— alkali · Oct 14, 10:51 PM · #
All the single ladies! (All the single ladies.)
All the single ladies! (All the single ladies.)
— Freddie · Oct 14, 11:22 PM · #
What’s being lost in all this is that the Democrat’s are imploding, yet everyone wants to talk about problems with the Republicans. Even if the Republicans can’t agree on a message right now, the reality is that the Democrats are wreaking havoc on the economy already damaged by the Republicans. Soon, closer to the 2010 elections, the Democrats will be eating one another. I personally think both parties are in disarray, and it’s because neither have the courage to get government under control and do the tough things necessary to experience the pain of economic adjustment so that we can grow again. Deflation is not the end of the world and could actually be a good thing. Spending has to be cut — we can’t tax and spend our way out. Bush set the spending in motion and now it’s out of control.
— mike farmer · Oct 15, 12:28 AM · #
Sanjay wrote:
Sorry, but that just doesn’t explain the attitude of the typical liberal. Warriors? Yes. Happy? No. They are too insistent that I pay for the things they think are valuable. If they were happy, it seems like they would be a little more content to leave us alone. We are always being told what we MUST do—and to join them in their wars or else we are morally bankrupt. They never seem to go happily on their way.
I think that a case can be made that the rallying cry for the Democrat party for the last 70 or 80 years (certainly for the last 16) has been: “NO TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH!!” I know way too many liberals, for whom I have great respect, who are probably better human beings than I, but who are way too comfortable with the deadly sin of envy. Envy is not an emotion associated with happiness.
— jd · Oct 15, 02:08 AM · #
Wait – our wars? Iraq and Afghanistan were our ideas?
Absolutely astounding. Jd, I can never tell if you’re absolutely pig-ignorant or just incredibly dishonest. Bit of both, I’m beginning to think. I’m actually a pretty happy person – until I read your posts. You, though – the hatred just seethes from your posts. Maybe you shouldn’t be lecturing anybody on how to live a happy life.
— Chet · Oct 15, 05:42 AM · #
“Wait – our wars? Iraq and Afghanistan were our ideas?”
The wars would never have happened without Democrat support and funding. Congress and executive are equal powers. Didn’t Freddie scold you about taking responsibility?
— mike farmer · Oct 15, 03:14 PM · #
“Democratic” funding? Mike, this is the reason that nobody can take your arguments seriously – the blindness to verifiable reality, the constant revisionist history.
What was it that Freddie said above, about conservativism? “its adherents defy the relevance of unflattering events by insisting that a genuine attempt at concretizing the ideology has never been made.” It’s amazing how, when Freddie makes these kinds of observations, conservatives fall all over themselves to prove him right.
— Chet · Oct 15, 04:54 PM · #
I don’t really want to go into all of Freddie’s long blog-post but he did get one thing right: Ross Douthat was far more interesting as a blogger than he is in his current avatar as a NYT columnist. I used to check Ross’s RSS feed even when I didn’t have time to read anything else – and now I barely feel like reading his columns. I think Ross doesn’t come off well in the op-ed format — the short-hand soundbites they use (David Brooks, Thomas Friedman are experts at the format) don’t fit his anguished on-one-hand-this-one-the-other-hand-that style of writing (which I loved, even though I wouldn’t agree with any of his conclusions).
So yes, while I may not be with Freddie on the whole “apology” thing, (and I certainly don’t think Douthat’s recent writing merits such a long blog-post) his most basic point I do agree with: I am simply not impressed with Ross’s recent columns.
— scritic · Oct 15, 05:40 PM · #
Chet, are you saying the Democrats couldn’t have voted against funding the war?
— mike farmer · Oct 15, 06:05 PM · #
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/iraq.us/
— mike farmer · Oct 15, 06:15 PM · #
jd, for one thing I think that that’s at best a cheap cartoon of liberals; it certainly would be hard to apply over recent history. For one, I don’t think you’d want to be standing on the suggestion that in fact conservatives aren’t trying to force large expenditures on everyone, trying to dictate what’s mroally acceptable, and not leaving other people alone! For another I think that, at least until Obama, liberals have been outraged over privacy infringement and taking of liberties, by degradation of the accused, by politicization of nonpartisan government offices. I think that would be very, very hard to argue against. Even as regards taxes on the rich, I think the great Clinton economic sin has been to convince liberals everywhere that they need to rob from the rich to give to the middle class, which I find a bit abominable: I’d like to hear parties falling over each other to help “the middle class” a lot less.
Farmer, it’s a bit foolish to react to being called “pig ignorant” by Chet, who seems eager to repeatedly prove himself TAS‘s dumbest commenter. I think the conservative/liberal “team” concept is beyond stupid, and, yeah, it does really underlie the Freddie error. But Chet is showing that error in spades.
For one, if Geroge Bush had done everything he did totally secretly without collusion elsewhere in the government, I still claim liberalism has a strong ethic of “taking responsibility” — and the misuse of that idea, btw, is one of the laughable sillinesses Freddie perpetrated there – in general. So I find Chet’s attitude there a bit odious: yes, Afghanistan is our war, Iraq is our war. We’ll fix it. We’re working on making it better, it’s all of our responsibility. I don’t go around saying, “I can’t believe George Bush locked up people without evidence or habeas and then had them tortured.” I go around saying, “I can’t believe we did.” Because we did, and we’ll make it as right as we can.
If one accepts these things as wholly Republican creations that’s still true. As has been pointed out we exist in communities of interest, and it’s an open question where to say which communities can be said to have been, say, objectively pro-torture because in wanting the things they wanted they on balance favored, say, John Boehner. Freddie and the like wish conveniently to draw the line between Bush-enablers and non-Bush-enablers in terms of party affiliation. But there’s any number of Bush policies that I and many other generally Democratic-voters supported: for example Philip Mangano’s excellent work or Bob Blackwill’s security revamp or even, for some, “faith-based initiatives.” Many of us support free trade and are grateful for the millions it has lifted from abject poverty. And these same people will point out indignantly that they supported Bush after 9/11, as did I. Hell, I support the general American Democratic framework that enabled Bush. I am not comfortable parcelling out “responsibility” and it is neither sensible nor helpful to do so.
But, as Mike Farmer points out, these things were not wholly republican creations. Democrats voted overwhelmingly for war in Afghanistan — at a time when they controlled the Senate! — and most gave Bush the AUMF against Iraq, and kept funding the war. Anyone wanting to lift the burden off their shoulders, had best stop bitching about how the still-more-in-the-minority Republicans can so impede health care legislation. When torture revelations broke, John McCain covered himself in glory by stepping right up, while, say, John Kerry looked at Rumsfeld’s gret polling numbers, kept his finger in the wind, and waited to speak. Lots of liberals — lots of Clintonistas for sure — didn’t just accede to but called for war in Iraq, and The New Republic crew seemed to think it was a must-do cakewalk. While Bush’s total inability to feign much interest in the people of New Orleans was revolting, it takes a lot of sophistry not to look at Katrina and see gross incompetence not only from the President but also from the (Democratic) mayor and governor. Besides, “Brownie” sailed through confirmation by a (Democratically-controlled) Senate with a unanimous vote, and nobody seemed bothered by his lack of relevant experience. Again: it is beyond foolish to demand gnashing of teeth from Ross Douthat or Conor Freidersdorf. The American, liberal tradition — which might be mischaracterized as “liberal guilt” — is clear here: these messes are our collective responsibility, and, let’s get to work on them.
Yours too, Farmer, none of your libertarian crap here….
— Sanjay · Oct 15, 07:14 PM · #
sanjay wrote:
I take that as your agreement that envy is at the heart of Democrat politics. But why pick on only Clinton? The mantra, No tax cuts for the rich is nothing new. Indeed, targeting the rich goes back to Roosevelt. It was hardly an anomaly of the Clinton administration.
Please don’t blame conservatism when conservatives behave like liberals. If you blame conservatives for too much spending (which they no doubt have, but they’re amateurs compared to Democrats), then certainly it’s all the more reason to support people who at least give lip service to cutting the size of government. Washington seems to damage the part of the brain that restrains spending. If people were upset with Bush’s spending, why the hell would we send someone like Obama to fix things?
And really, Sanjay, you didn’t refute anything I said about liberals, you simply said I shouldn’t criticize because conservatives are also guilty. That’s not a refutation of my “cartoonish” description.
BTW, when I said “your wars”, I was replying to your “happy warrior” reference. Chet, aka Mr. Happy, made the mistake of thinking I was referring to War—like in Iraq. Even Chet knows that no liberal could be happy marching off to war. “Your” wars would be the war on Poverty, the war on hunger, the war on homelessness, the war on obesity, the war on illiteracy, the war on Fox News…God, the list is endless.
Aren’t you contradicting yourself here? First, you say it’s beyond silly to demand responsibility from Conor and Ross, then, in effect, you demand responsibility by calling it our collective responsibility. I think liberals just can’t help it—though it’s pretty obvious you’re not a typical liberal.
One more comment with respect to Katrina. I don’t know, but I suspect that much more good was done by people who willingly gave of their time to help in New Orleans, than by taking our money, funneling it through the corruption in Washington and then handing it out through more corruption in Louisiana.
— jd · Oct 15, 09:44 PM · #
I’m saying that, yes, there were not enough Democrats to vote against funding the war given unanimous Republican support.
— Chet · Oct 15, 09:49 PM · #
Maybe you did, Sanjay, but I didn’t. I did everything I could to stop my government from torturing people. I opposed it vociferously in both public and private discourse. In every election I had the right to participate in, I voted against pro-torture candidates. I used the power of my wallet to support anti-torture causes and reward journalism that exposed torture.
What else was I supposed to do, Sanjay? Fly to Gitmo and start shooting American soldiers to get them to stop? Shoot politicans? Shoot the president? I did everything I could within the civil bounds of political discourse. The problem was that the other side was not so limited. Torture’s supporters jailed journalists. Shut down microphones. Ended debates. Spiked stories. Lied and prevaricated.
Democracy allows me, theoretically, a degree of personal influence over the actions of the government. That connotes a responsibility that back-flows through that influence to me, a responsibility for what the government does in my name.
But when steps are taken to eliminate or ignore or suppress that influence, as Republicans and the Bush Administration did, it eliminates my responsibility, as well. Sorry, but no. I did not torture anybody, and I’m not responsible for those who thought that would be good policy. Only torture’s supporters are.
— Chet · Oct 15, 09:56 PM · #
“Yours too, Farmer, none of your libertarian crap here….”
I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam
Seriously, I take responsibility to say what I think is right, regardless of who is in power, and I think you do, too — I think the liberals who are true liberals have things more right than wrong — but I think the liberals who’ve moved over to progressivism are dead wrong. I would love to see a coalition of liberals, conservatives and libertarians stop the partisanship and truly lead a people’s movement, protected by a limited government, into the 21st century — to work together to deal with poverty and healthcare issues; to find a way to peaceful free trade; to find rational solutions to environmental concerns; to protect people’s decisions regarding sexuality, religion, no religion; to end all corporate welfare; to build strong, responsive communities; to create better educational opportunities; and, finally, to give true equal opportunity to anyone who strives for a better life, regardless of status, race or gender.
Chet — this is the last comment to you — if the Democrats had voted against the war resolution it would have been defeated by 52-48 — then they wouldn’t have had to wait until 2006 to decide whether to continue funding the war, which they decided against.
— mike farmer · Oct 15, 10:23 PM · #
There were only 50 Democrats in the Senate in 2002. The tie, of course, would have been broken by Dick Cheney. Only 1 Republican voted against the war resolution, compared to 21 Democrats – but somehow it’s a Democratic war? The contortions you people engage in to escape your complicity in the greatest political disaster in my lifetime – just amazing.
“Last comment”? I’m going to clue you in to what Jd still hasn’t realized – I’m not going to stop replying to your messages just because you’re in a snit. Are you sure you want my replies to your arguments to go unaddressed?
— Chet · Oct 16, 03:14 AM · #
It’s amazing that Chet disavows responsibility for torture entirely: again, I find this it wasn’t me stuff odious. He’s sort of obviously wrong on three grounds.
Firstly, the assertions about how he voted are at best unlikely. Freddie isn’t taking Conor to task for supporting (say) torture but for participating in coalitions which did. But as Farmer and I have discussed, while the blame for Bush policy may fall more heavily on Republicans, it is nonetheless fully bipartisan. If you supported Democrats 2000-2008, you supported politicians who occasionally threw their weight behind Bush policy or who raised monies for and aided those who did. That’s part of the foolishness of Freddie’s “responibility” meme. If you paid taxes, you paid into Bush’s wars. There are very few political coalitions which kept clean and somehow I doubt Chet’s writing, Thoreau-style, from prison.
Secondly, the Chet stance there leaves you no real ground from which to oppose the most excessive right-wing ideas. “Torture is not my responsibility” is illiberal and just dumb. Look, the anti-redistributionist idea is, if you’re poor or don’t have health care or whatever, that’s not my responsibility, I didn’t do it, why do I have to bear the burden of that? [Make Douthat and Freidersdorf do it!] Lots of Asian Americans hate affirmative action — which can discriminate against them in some academic settings — because they and their ancestors never participated in American slavery, may not even have been on these shores before the Civil Rights movement: why is this their burden? But we accept that when you play in this representative democracy you assume its responsibilities, its past. You have to pay into them if you want the benfits of this society, and once you’re part of us, well, we supported slavery. I suppose to some extent this is what jd means about making others fight our wars. Liberalism understands that we’re in this together as a country and we’ll together have to “take responsibility” for our mistakes: that’s I suppose the downside, morally, of democracy. Prisoner abuse, domestic spying, etc. are the things my society chose to do, and I’ll assume the shame and do what I can to change it.
But thirdly, the whole defense plays into jd’s whiny guilty liberal seterotype. I mean, wow: Chet voted, he bitched, and he threw his spare change to Amnesty International, and what else was I supposed to do? Is it not clear that this is the minimum of what we expect from people in this society? I mean, it’s great if people do that – if it wasn’t the minimum it wouldn’t be the standard, as a friend of mine says – but it’s hardly exhaustive or even impressive: what Chet’s documented is hardly doing anything. Over the past decade tone of people got appalled at what was happening. Many of us poured our time and effort into all kinds of projects to educate, to work in the third world, to document legal abuses, to organize communities, to fundraise for research or for legal defense. You don’t even have to run off to Baghdad with the UN or command vast legal talent to help prisoners at Gitmo, though I am awed by the decency and sacrifice of those who did. Lots of people – I among them, but so many of us that nobody’s really notable – merely turned their backs on lucrative or prestigious careers to enter public service: for example, I’m a little familiar with Obama’s Energy Secretary, who did just that: but most of us took small, low paying jobs elsewhere where we thought we could repair damage.
If, say, prisoner abuse in particular bugs you, what else you’re supposed to do could be as easy as falling off a log: put on a uniform. The heroes who exposed a lot of this stuff, and brought much of it to a screeching halt, were military who saw what was going on and knew it was profoundly wrong: without them we’d still be torturing. If you have any remarkable skills or ability it’s not particularly hard to get into a situation where your conscience can stop those things: and many have. If more people realized what they’re supposed to do, this kind of thing would never have happened.
Which leads to a clear rebuke to jd: I talk to a lot of people, including a lot of military, and while it’s true that they skew rightward, there’s some soldiers who are pretty liberal. Hell, there’s some who are moonbats even from my Berkeley/Cambridge perspective. So when you say, no liberal could be happy marching off to war, it is a slur on some of the fine people who defend your rights, and invites the question: so how many combat tours did you do?
— Sanjay · Oct 16, 05:56 PM · #
Damn, every time Sanjay goes off like that, even my sclerotic heart strings start to vibrate with liberal pride. It’s doing a line off of America’s tits.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 16, 07:06 PM · #
It’s like doing a . . .
Fuck it, I ruined it. It’s exhilarating. Okay? It’s exhilarating.
That is all.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 16, 07:11 PM · #
Well, no, I didn’t. I could go through, election by election, and show you that a lot of the Democrats I voted for lost, and were never in Congress; that the Democrats I did vote for and did win didn’t serve on the relevant committees and so never had authority over intelligence policy. I never donated money to any of the ones who won, so I’m not financially liable.
And even if I had, what’s the alternative? Not participate in democracy? Seems like that would have made me more responsible, not less. If there was literally nothing I could have done to disconnect myself from torture, how can I possibly be responsible for it?
But they don’t pay for the wars with taxes. They pay for the wars with made-up money.
You don’t answer the question, though. What else was I supposed to do? I availed myself of every option to participate in these political decisions. My political opponents saw to it that my influence was negated.
What was I supposed to do, Sanjay? Why don’t you answer the question? Do you even have an answer? If I’m responsible for torture, what was I supposed to have done differently? I didn’t torture anybody; I was never in the room to do so. I never asked anyone to do it on my behalf. I told them not to, but they did it anyway.
If it’s my responsibility, Sanjay, what was I supposed to do differently? I guess I’d like to know so I can do it, next time.
My “remarkable skills” are in the biological sciences, and compared to most of my peers they’re not especially remarkable at all. I’ve got a lot of experience working with fruit flies. Can you explain how I was supposed to leverage those abilities to stop torture at Gitmo, please?
— Chet · Oct 16, 08:19 PM · #
Clearly you’ve never seen Leonard Part 6.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 16, 08:58 PM · #
Rest assured, Chet, I’ve worked with a lot of fruit flies and I know your skills are less than middling.
Well, if you put on a uniform with a biology background you’d be put in the medical command, which was present for a lot of prisoner abuse and very much in a position to stop it. So, that was easy. Next problem?
— Sanjay · Oct 16, 08:58 PM · #
Naturally, you’re an expert Ph.D. in biology, too. Any other credentials you’d like to claim, while you’re at it?
But I have no medical background. At best I’d be doing pest control (which is under “medical command” but should indicate to even you that “medical command” doesn’t immediately mean “medical personnel”) and unless I’ve very much mistaken the bug killer guys weren’t involved in any interrogation.
Can you try a little harder, please? Maybe you could use the Ph.D. in entomology I know you’re itching to claim you have.
— Chet · Oct 18, 08:00 PM · #
From anyone else it would be remarkable that just about everything Chet said or implied is simply wrong (except: entomologists are I think “medical” in the military). From him it’s par.
I’m going to put a bit up here. Because Chet might in theory profit by reading it I’ll motivate that first.
Note that Chet has a remarkable frequency of being simply wrong and/or incohrenet when he makes flat out asseriotns — say on physics or evolutoion or what Dawkins says or wacky incoherence on art. Most amusingly lately was
Which was laugh-out-of-one’s-chair amusing because, every single thing he asserted turned out to be wrong despite the incredulous, condescending tone. The same happens when he makes physics or biology claims. Which is amazing and if that doesn’t tell you there’s a problem, I can’t imagine what would.
Thus the need to motivate, because Chet wonders why say Farmer is worried about not replying to him. The answer is because I think most readers — even the slow ones like Freddie, say, recognize that he’s kind of stupid. In general his last word is, wow, a powerful indictment of whatever he’s saying. So neither I nor Farmer “replies” to Chet as such; I don’t think he’s smart enough to benefit. But really, really dumb people are interesting: if you’re operating with received ideas, whence do they come? Is there a widespread meme out there to which one ought to speak? Because it is in all likelihood being propagated by some otherwise clear-headed smart people and should be considered. And what Chet’s going on when he starts is a meme among young scientists. I’ve spent a score of years behind lab benches training (smart) young scientists and that meme impedes a lot of them so I want not to leave it unanswered.
He references that I mentioned I have a physics Ph.D., which I do. Now, that came up in a discussion about how I had spent quite a long time involved with directed evolution work, which I have, so it takes scientific ignorance to be surprised I’ve done fly genetics. But the apparent confusion — a physics Ph.D.? Can’t do biology is because he’s some undergrad with less than a year doing this stuff, who apparently can’t even read the lay press by guys like Dawkins on it, and who’s decided he’s an expert in it. So, let’s educate.
For the record: what I mostly know is mechanistic enzymology and arrow pushing — which, yes, is what most academic settings classify as chemistry — and a lot of math. I guess I feel up to discussing optics or chemotaxis with just about anyone too: I’ve worked a bit in those fields and a very little in fluids. Right now I mostly do antibiotic resistance and epidemiology stuff which is out of my comfort zone but it’s where I was useful. Note that so far “optics” is the only “physicsy” thing. I am a member of ACS — not of APS — and did my physics Ph.D. in a chemistry lab where most of the grad students where in molecular and cell biology. Nothing about that is special. If, at this very beginning stage of undergrad education, Chet goes ‘round the phyics profs at his school, he’ll find that all of them, and half the math profs, have thought about evolution more than he. Here’s the thing: that’s how science is done. Everyone who is at a level to do it in any way where other people pay attention, knows that. When a young person starts performing at that level — this isn’t going to be Chet — he/she is immediately struck by the diverse and wacky backgrounds of people in the field. Consequently: if you are a starting out scientist and take this attitude, your career is going nowhere, because your advisors and/or their collaborators will write you off as knowing nothing. Be warned. Your “discipline” does matter! But more for signalling reasons. “Physics” mostly tells my biochemistry colleagues, “it would be wise to let me check your math.” it means I’ve gotten work on LIDAR and stuff like that, but really at this point what jobs come my way has to do with what I’ve already done and what generral knowledge I have, not with letters on a degree.
[Except, side: in retrospect “chemical engineering” would’ve allowed me to do many of the same things and I’d get paid more and generally get more respect. Worked among chemical engineers for a while, felt stupid for that reason. Attention all young research biologists: consider majoring in chem E!]
OK. On to Army. Nothing to say: Chet’s just wrong. Biochemistry, cell biology, microbiology and immunology types are in the medical command. Period. Most of them seem to have zero “medical experience,” but if you haven’t noticed doctors aren’t tremendously bright — Chet, consdier med school! — and you can learn the essentials to run the labs quickly since military are exempted from CLIA: half of all the Army does is train skills as needed after all. In hosptials like at Abu Ghraib that involves a lot of patient work — gets samples, reports to docs on them, sees patient data. So, again: just wrong.
Although in initially pointing out that as a what could I do? I lazily hit what I had initially pointed out was the easiest thing. There’s any number of organizations that one could’ve een involved with during the Bush years (and subsequently) doing good work all over. Rarely, when involved with say inner-city teaching or homelessness work or what-have-you, have I been working “in my field,” but I think it’s important to keep your hand in that stuff, and my wife and I do a lot of that stuff still- on the weekends to teach those values to our kids (even though I’m a bit lazier now since, screw it, I work all week for the public, so, fuck ‘em on the weekends). So I don’t mean to send the message, “public service equals carrying a gun,” it was just an obvious, easy answer to a cretin. There’re many ways to _do something and ideally everyone should have a shoulder at the wheel.
— Sanjay · Oct 19, 07:24 PM · #
From anyone else it would be remarkable that just about everything Chet said or implied is simply wrong (except: entomologists are I think “medical” in the military). From him it’s par.
I’m going to put a bit up here. Because Chet might in theory profit by reading it I’ll motivate that first.
Note that Chet has a remarkable frequency of being simply wrong and/or incohrenet when he makes flat out asseriotns — say on physics or evolutoion or what Dawkins says or wacky incoherence on art. Most amusingly lately was
Which was laugh-out-of-one’s-chair amusing because, every single thing he asserted turned out to be wrong despite the incredulous, condescending tone. The same happens when he makes physics or biology claims. Which is amazing and if that doesn’t tell you there’s a problem, I can’t imagine what would.
Thus the need to motivate, because Chet wonders why say Farmer is worried about not replying to him. The answer is because I think most readers — even the slow ones like Freddie, say, recognize that he’s kind of stupid. In general his last word is, wow, a powerful indictment of whatever he’s saying. So neither I nor Farmer “replies” to Chet as such; I don’t think he’s smart enough to benefit. But really, really dumb people are interesting: if you’re operating with received ideas, whence do they come? Is there a widespread meme out there to which one ought to speak? Because it is in all likelihood being propagated by some otherwise clear-headed smart people and should be considered. And what Chet’s going on when he starts is a meme among young scientists. I’ve spent a score of years behind lab benches training (smart) young scientists and that meme impedes a lot of them so I want not to leave it unanswered.
He references that I mentioned I have a physics Ph.D., which I do. Now, that came up in a discussion about how I had spent quite a long time involved with directed evolution work, which I have, so it takes scientific ignorance to be surprised I’ve done fly genetics. But the apparent confusion — a physics Ph.D.? Can’t do biology is because he’s some undergrad with less than a year doing this stuff, who apparently can’t even read the lay press by guys like Dawkins on it, and who’s decided he’s an expert in it. So, let’s educate.
For the record: what I mostly know is mechanistic enzymology and arrow pushing — which, yes, is what most academic settings classify as chemistry — and a lot of math. I guess I feel up to discussing optics or chemotaxis with just about anyone too: I’ve worked a bit in those fields and a very little in fluids. Right now I mostly do antibiotic resistance and epidemiology stuff which is out of my comfort zone but it’s where I was useful. Note that so far “optics” is the only “physicsy” thing. I am a member of ACS — not of APS — and did my physics Ph.D. in a chemistry lab where most of the grad students where in molecular and cell biology. Nothing about that is special. If, at this very beginning stage of undergrad education, Chet goes ‘round the phyics profs at his school, he’ll find that all of them, and half the math profs, have thought about evolution more than he. Here’s the thing: that’s how science is done. Everyone who is at a level to do it in any way where other people pay attention, knows that. When a young person starts performing at that level — this isn’t going to be Chet — he/she is immediately struck by the diverse and wacky backgrounds of people in the field. Consequently: if you are a starting out scientist and take this attitude, your career is going nowhere, because your advisors and/or their collaborators will write you off as knowing nothing. Be warned. Your “discipline” does matter! But more for signalling reasons. “Physics” mostly tells my biochemistry colleagues, “it would be wise to let me check your math.” it means I’ve gotten work on LIDAR and stuff like that, but really at this point what jobs come my way has to do with what I’ve already done and what generral knowledge I have, not with letters on a degree.
[Except, side: in retrospect “chemical engineering” would’ve allowed me to do many of the same things and I’d get paid more and generally get more respect. Worked among chemical engineers for a while, felt stupid for that reason. Attention all young research biologists: consider majoring in chem E!]
OK. On to Army. Nothing to say: Chet’s just wrong. Biochemistry, cell biology, microbiology and immunology types are in the medical command. Period. Most of them seem to have zero “medical experience,” but if you haven’t noticed doctors aren’t tremendously bright — Chet, consdier med school! — and you can learn the essentials to run the labs quickly since military are exempted from CLIA: half of all the Army does is train skills as needed after all. In hosptials like at Abu Ghraib that involves a lot of patient work — gets samples, reports to docs on them, sees patient data. So, again: just wrong.
Although in initially pointing out that as a what could I do? I lazily hit what I had initially pointed out was the easiest thing. There’s any number of organizations that one could’ve een involved with during the Bush years (and subsequently) doing good work all over. Rarely, when involved with say inner-city teaching or homelessness work or what-have-you, have I been working “in my field,” but I think it’s important to keep your hand in that stuff, and my wife and I do a lot of that stuff still- on the weekends to teach those values to our kids (even though I’m a bit lazier now since, screw it, I work all week for the public, so, fuck ‘em on the weekends). So I don’t mean to send the message, “public service equals carrying a gun,” it was just an obvious, easy answer to a cretin. There’re many ways to _do something and ideally everyone should have a shoulder at the wheel.
— Sanjay · Oct 19, 07:24 PM · #
Sanjay – nobody believes you’re the one who knows what he’s talking about. Don’t you get that, yet?
When you say “Everything Chet just said is wrong” – nobody believes you! Because you don’t demonstrate it. You just assert it, and then claim a Ph.D. in the field so that it looks like you know what you’re talking about.
But you never do. It’s amazing! When you say that Bell’s Inequality is about bells being unequal to each other, it becomes stupidly obvious that your “degrees” are lies.
No, you don’t – and it’s incredibly obvious. It’s why you can’t point to any published papers in that field (or any other.) that you’ve authored. It’s why you never make arguments about physics, just assertions that I’m wrong. It’s why you have all this time to hang around here and be obsessed with me.
But I never said that they weren’t! Sanjay, the reason I know that your background is a fiction is because you can’t read. It’s obvious to everyone. How can you not be getting that?
— Chet · Oct 19, 11:40 PM · #
I’m just wondering if the Army would really put an entomologist on medical duty, because that sounds like a great reason not to join the Army: “Before we extract the shrapnel, I will have to remove your carapace. Aides, hold his thorax.”
— Bo · Oct 19, 11:54 PM · #
My wife is a Ph.D. entomology student, so she gets offers from the Army all the time – which is why (unlike Sanjay) I know whereof I speak.
They’re offers for the medical corps, of course, she’d be a medical officer – but naturally she wouldn’t be doing medical work, she’d be doing pest control. Powdering for chiggers, that kind of thing. The idea that her experience with insects would get her in to the position to monitor a military interrogation is just the latest of Sanjay’s idiotic howlers. He literally has no idea what he’s talking about.
— Chet · Oct 20, 06:47 PM · #
Things I have said nowhere above, which Chet seems to believe I said:
* Chet is qualified to be an entomoligist
* Entomologists are routinely involved in Army clinical care
* Lab types serve as attending physicians
Nowhere above will any of those things be found above my name.
Things which are true, and which I did say:
* Persons with biochem/molbio/immuno/genetics/micro knowledge are used by Army for the medical command. Chet claims this background.
* They are used as lab techs and research lab techs and do operate in clinical settings, taking patient samples and data and working with patient care
* As such they very much were (and are) in a position to examine detainee treatment [in fact facilities like Abu Ghraib had lab techs and Army trains same on POW care now for exactly this reason.]
Now, because I work for the feds on public health, I’m very very sure I know what I’m talking about. Because Chet and, presumably, Chet’s wife are talentless fools, I’m very sure they don’t. So I tell you what. I’ll put $5 grand — less than that is not worth the disclosure — on those things which I did say.
C’mon, Chet, take my money. Let’s bet, stupid. Put up $5,000 and you can get your wife a nice TV.
I’m dead serious. Let’s set it up. Don’t waste my time if you don’t want the bet though.
— Sanjay · Oct 20, 09:56 PM · #
Easily disprovable lies. Sanjay, the contempt you display for your audience and their capacity to read never fails to astound:
Chet: “I’ve got a lot of experience working with fruit flies. Can you explain how I was supposed to leverage those abilities to stop torture at Gitmo, please?”
Sanjay: “Well, if you put on a uniform with a biology background you’d be put in the medical command, which was present for a lot of prisoner abuse and very much in a position to stop it.”
“In a position to stop it.” Were those, or were those not, your words, Sanjay? Did you, or did you not, claim that my experience working with fruit flies qualified me to attend military interrogations and potentially put a stop to them?
I can understand why you would backpedal from that claim – it’s astoundingly insipid and moronic – but anybody can see that’s exactly what you claimed. This, Sanjay, is why nobody thinks you’re the one who knows what you’re talking about – no matter what ridiculous heights of expertise and experience you claim. (Someone who actually worked with insects, for instance, would not have your trouble spelling the word “entomologist.”)
Oh, naturally you do. And you work in optics. And discovered evolution. Have received the Nobel prize in chemistry. Design video games. Sailed single-handedly around the world. Was the sole survivor of the Alamo. Sure, why shouldn’t I believe this latest claim of expertise? Truly, collecting these varied and hyperbolic attempts of yours to corner the expertise on any and all conceivable subjects has been the highlight of my weekend.
You know, Sanjay, you’re an incredible tool. Just an out and out asshole. You know, you should really work on your self-esteem problem. It’s not too late for you to do something really meaningful with your life besides just sell coffee.
— Chet · Oct 21, 01:44 AM · #
So take the bet. $5,000.
yep, lab techs saw how detainees were treated, and were in a position to blow the whistle: I’ve a suitemate who was in the lab at Abu Ghraib, so I’m pretty sure. But hey, it’s a flase claim of expertise, right? Take the $5K, Chet.
Or, well, we know who’s full of it, don’t we>
— Sanjay · Oct 21, 12:33 PM · #