Up Your Arsenal

Here is an outstanding comment that neatly encapsulates the moral dilemma of the two-faced "okay we were wrong but we meant well and anyway you were wrong toooooo" crowd of contemptible scribblers.

Ignatieff represents the corrupt and noxious tradition of moral imperialism. There is nothing either noble or tragic about it. Throughout the course of American empire, just as with the empires that preceded it and will probably succeed it, these moral imperialists have been the enablers and helpmates of the more crass and materialistic type of imperialist. Wherever there was a sugar industry to be cornered, a fruit plantation to be annexed, a native population to be moved out, an oil field to be accessed and exploited, a strategically placed peninsula to be militarized, a community of local women to be made into a brothel to serve sailors, a popular local leader who won’t play ball with the imperial commercial interests, these fine moral fellows have floated in on the same warships with their plans to convert the heathens to Christianity or Democracy or Liberalism. They were there in South America, dishing out last rights to converted Inca souls, as the latter were exterminated. They were there in the old west, civilizing the Red Man as he was pushed into the ground or off the edge of the continent. They were in Hawaii and the Philippines and Cuba and Puerto Rico and Nicaragua, saving red socialist souls for the god of capitalism. And they were in Iraq, writing western Liberal constitutions and intellectually underwriting the butchery that got their reforming feet in the door.

I don't want to hear about how much these fellows love their country. That doesn't do it for me. The United States is drowning in an absolute flood of "country-love", and gagging on the junk food of patriotism. Before I am willing to give these Liberal moralists the time of day, I want an indication that they have some clue about the many things that are wrong with this country, and that they have some disposition to change those things. I want to see some signs that they are capable of emerging from the mass stupidity that witnesses one barbarous episode after another, only to throw them all down the memory hole and put manufactured memories, movie images and preposterous political speeches in their place. But the moral imperialists never get around to that kind of honest critique of their own societies. Their dreamy moralistic visages are always and only pointed in one direction: outward.

The moral imperialists are in love with the American Way, and want to spread it. Well I am not in love with the American Way. I reject much of that Way. I reject empire. I reject the cult of the nation. I reject the brutality of the American economic system. I reject the savagery of the westward expansion, and the genocide of the Native Americans. I reject the culture of guns, gouging and brawling and rumbling. I reject the record of continual, aggressive, warlike conquest. I reject the shallow kinetic culture of greed, acquisition and ceaseless interpersonal competition. I reject the fatalistic acceptance of a grotesquely imbalanced and undemocratic world of economic winners and losers. I reject the revolting commodification of sexuality. I reject the ongoing rape of the environment, and the prevalent love of replacing sublime natural beauty with shoddy human ugliness. But I do believe a better world is possible.

[all emphases in original]

Now, there's a great deal more that's right with America than is wrong, and our respect for the principles of law and human rights, however flawed, is substantially better than that of many countries, especially those in the Middle East, especially those in thrall to medievalist dogma.

But we are slipping, and we are notoriously averse to serious self-reflection. The existence of burqas does not absolve us from our own responsibilities, nor does it magically negate the concrete reasons why we are where we are, and fail to do anything sensible about those reasons. And smug putzes like Ignatieff, who tend to cloak their half-culpas in passive-aggressive rump bien pensant weasel words, do not help things. Nor do the Everything Changed and Everything Matters dime-store philosophakers, who refuse to face realities with the same grim determination as the Ignatieffs and the Friedmans.

One of the great things about there being a million little debates on the internets is not only that they serve as correctives to the bland posturing of the Serious Thinkers, but that they knock down the smug delusion that these people know something profound that escapes us peons. This has been consistently proven untrue, yet the same people are saying the same things, five years and countless lives later. And other people nod and respond, and cooperate at least objectively in the ridiculous notion that any of them still deserve a place at the discussion table.

They don't deserve such a place as long as they continue to avoid the central task accorded them, which is repudiating their initial foolishness of judgment. And they may be right, in the professional sense -- if they admitted that their esteemed judgment was so tragically, fatally flawed, they really would be out of a job. The operational integrity of The Village utterly depends on preserving the veneer of studied perspicacity.

The most recent week of guests on The Daily Show, two of whom were Bill Kristol and Cheney hagiographer Stephen Hayes, illustrates this perverted logic. No doubt Jon Stewart brought them on to be willing, somewhat amiable targets for what Stewart (to his credit) has evolved into a slightly more aggressive, penetrating interview style. (Though Stewart is also in the habit of trying to backtrack and lighten things as the interview winds up, which is a mistake. There is no reason to give even the appearance of retreat from sniveling tools like Kristol and Hayes, who are well-compensated for their intellectual panhandling.)

Stewart's intent seems to be to render their arguments inoperable, which is not difficult to do. But because these people have no substantial ethical moorings, and because they are part of a corrupted process, just having them on actually serves to legitimize them further. It should not be an opportunity for weasels and hacks to show that they can be good sports and take a joke; it's not a fucking joke. These are repulsive people whose paid mission is solely to defend other repugnant people, and their lies, corruption, cronyism, and failed policies, which affect us all. I don't think Atrios was off the mark when he recently opined that Kristol is a person of the sort whose image should be routinely spat upon by decent people at this point. And in a thoughtful, contemplative nation more tethered to its founding principles, that would be the case.

Instead, people like Kristol are welcomed and lauded in what passes for modern salons of Serious Discourse in this country, without a trace of irony. Being wrong in and of itself is not a crime, but nor should it be buffered by its "good intentions". It should be hauled out and recognized for exactly what it is, and why it happened in the first place, not for personal retribution, but to avoid future occurrences.

But when you have people who were clearly, objectively wrong, and refuse to admit such, and either color their professional regret with dolorous pud pounding (like Ignatieff), enable it by cheerfully licking the same boots that got them there (like Hayes), or insist, at absolutely zero personal cost to themselves, that we must prepare to trudge yet further into the Big Muddy, and by God use their same fucking map that got us there in the first place (like Kristol), the least a responsible media presence can do is to stop giving them a soapbox. Kristol has his own fucking magazine, yet the Washington Post feels some ontological need to give him a column. Hayes is a sloppy thinker and a lackey to the worst sort of people American politics has to offer. Ignatieff peddles his weepy tropes in the country's largest magazines.

These people are nothing but poseurs, charlatans, pseudo-intellectual concern trolls. There is no goddamned reason for any responsible media entity to give them so much as the time of day, even if the mission is to refute what they say. Facts never mattered to them in the first place; what makes anyone think that even the most comprehensive refutation of their bullshit will sway them or their idiot fans one iota?