A few weeks ago, I made a mistake while bloviating on the Sunday morning television program This Week With George Stephanopoulos. I said that all military options, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, should remain on the table in our future dealings with Iran. I was wrong on three counts.
First, my words were a technical violation of a long-standing protocol: A diplomat friend tells me that while it is appropriate to say, "All options should remain on the table," the direct mention of nukes — especially any hint of the first use of nukes — is, as Stephanopoulos correctly said, "crossing a line." If George had asked, "What about nukes?" the diplomatic protocol would have been to tapdance: "I can't imagine ever having to use nuclear weapons," or some such, leaving the nuclear door open, but never saying so specifically. In truth, I was trying to make the same point, undiplomatically — which comes easy for me: If the Iranians persist in crazy talk about wiping Israel, or New York, off the face of the earth, it isn't a bad idea if we hint that we can get crazy, too. One can easily imagine the unthinkable: a suitcase nuclear weapon, acquired from the former Soviet Union by Iranian agents, detonated in New York, London or Tel Aviv. A nuclear response certainly would have to be on the table then — and the military would be negligent if it weren't studying all possible nuclear scenarios.
Okay, I'm actually with him on this, and he deserves some credit for publicly admitting that he's not all that well-versed in the admittedly esoteric mores of diplomacy. Frankly, if anything, it's an apt demonstration that a magazine or newspaper columnist -- liberal or conservative -- is perhaps not the best person to poke for an extemporaneous analysis of highly-sensitive and specific aspects of foreign policy. Part of columnizing (if that's a word, and I guess it is now) involves keeping the pace of the topic concise and entertaining, so there is always the temptation to extemporize more in the cause of rhythm and punch than accuracy and probity. Klein fucked up, and at least he's big enough to admit that much.
But he's not much bigger than that, unfortunately, because he quickly returns to showing the corporate class that yanks his ball-gag just how different and "centrist" he is from those nasssty librulses, yesss.
Recently, though, there's been a growing sense among some Democrats that since the Republicans have an obnoxious amen chorus of radio talk-show hosts and vituperative elected officials like the late, great Tom DeLay, the Democrats should respond by being equally vehement and obnoxious. There's been a growing sense that since Republicans resort to disgraceful tactics — the impeachment of Bill Clinton, questioning the war records of candidates (John Kerry, Max Cleland) who happen to be Democrats — Democrats should respond in kind, call for the impeachment of George W. Bush and resort to demagoguery whenever plausible. [emphasis mine]
Liberals have quite a ways to go even to approach the level of vituperation "mainstream" "conservatives" have been happily accorded in the corporate media (some of whom, no doubt, have some financial stake in the publishing houses and media companies that peddle their product). I put the sneer quotes over those words to emphasize just how badly those words have been altered and abused. There is no way authoritarian cultists like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity are actually conservative; the very fact that they are allowed on morning shows to peddle their violent rhetoric (oh, won't someone please think of the children?) demonstrates exactly how the marginal has been allowed to become mainstream. Merely selling lots of wingnut welfare "books" and having lots of mouth-breathers tune into your Chimpco-fellating radio screamfests do not make you "mainstream", any more than selling ten million records would make Taylor Hicks a good singer.
And I deeply resent Klein's careless abuse of the word "equally", because it really isn't even fucking close, the difference between left and right rhetoric. While pretty much all political discourse on the internets angry and caustic (and news flash, overpaid media tools -- it's been like that for a decade or so. Welcome to the jungle, bitches!), there is simply no analogue on the left for the violent dolchstosslegende exhortations on the right, which quite simply seems to have become a normative behavior pattern that cannot simply be written off as harmless ranting.
Fortunately, an actual journalist has helpfully catalogued some of the more alarming instances, and put them in one place. Even an overpaid halfwit like Klein can follow this bouncing ball, and ponder his abuse of the English language:
Misha of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler on the Supreme Court: "Five ropes, five robes, five trees. Some assembly required." [7/11/06]
BC of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler on John Kerry: "Rope. Tree. Justice. The only three things that Qerry [sic] deserves for his 'service'." [10/28/04]
Dean Esmay on New York Times reporters: "Exposing such a secret program is not whistle-blowing -- it is high treason. When I say 'treason' I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead." [12/18/05]
Megan McCardle (who uses the pseudonym Jane Galt) on anti-war demonstrators in New York City: "I think some in New York are going to laugh even harder when they try to unleash some civil disobedience, Lenin style, and some New Yorker who understands the horrors of war all too well picks up a two-by-four and teaches them how very effective violence can be when it's applied in a firm, pre-emptive manner." [2/13/03]
That's not even half of Foser's list, by the way. I'm not sure how seriously to take these patterns just yet; I suppose that unless actual instances start occurring there's just not much you can do. If only these authoritarian retards understood that idea, that when newspapers profile the SecDef's residence with his cooperation in a travel section puff piece, or talk about a supposedly secret (so secret that it has one of the world's largest trade shows, as well as a cleverly disguised website) bank tracking program that is probably being abused by the government like everything else it does in secret, that that is what rational people refer to as "the exercise of free speech".
That is the distinction that Klein and his fellow hacks either refuse to acknowledge or are simply too stupid to get. We would like a little more intellectual honesty and a little less fake objectivity out of Klein and his cohorts; they want to string his mangy ass up for sedition and treason. That is not "equal"; that is not a difference without a distinction. I have never heard of any "liberal" or "left" commentator or activist openly advocate the murder of Supreme Court justices who hand down rulings they don't like, or the assassination of former presidents they don't like. I have never heard of a "liberal" advocating that Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter be lynched for their inciteful and careless rhetoric.
There are bigger issues here than whether accredited journamalism media whores feel crowded and disrespected by the barbarians at the gates of the internets. I honestly don't know what it's going to take for people like Klein to get a fucking clue about this. Maybe when the threats become real, and one of Klein's seditious colleagues (or a member of their families; one of these animals suggested publishing where journalists' children attend school) gets physically attacked by one of these psychopaths, he'll get the picture finally.
But by then it will be too late. As long as "respectable" commentators continue pretending that words do not have meanings and that both sides are "equal" in tone, content, and intent, it may already be too late.
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