closet conservatives on ilx

For years I tried to make this notion work sans cognitive dissonance. Nowadays, I'm afraid I see this point on the political spectrum as the metaphoric equivalent to the commons area in Federal Prison where Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber are said to have stopped to chat.

on the other hand, i tend to think of extreme liberals as pretty conservative. (momus is a good example)

even for an avowed racist like yourself, this is rather shocking, congratulations

Closet Communists here

Some of the Jewish posters naturally make rightish noises when you say stuff about Israel.

So that's that. If you're not sure that the Gaza pullout will solve anything because Hamas has gone on the record saying they'll continue their terrorism anyway, that's not just having a differing opinion, that's "rightish." End of argument, then.

Love in a manly way.

haha no. i would say that, in the past year or so, there have been several ideas held by right wingers currently, that i would agree with. or, more to the point, certain of the bedrock assumptions abt the left's critique (of foreign policy in partic) i am increasingly unconvinced by (i don't think terrorism is sourced in oppression, that's the biggie. stated differently, i try not to reflexively assume that one's position on a spectrum of power figures as an inverse of your ethical standing.) beyond that i'm the new dealer i always was.

It doesn't follow, does it, that thinking Israel should never have been created means you think Israel should now cease to be?

When was the last time "balanced budgets" and "fiscal responsibility" was a part of being a conservative? Not a rhetorical question, I get the feeling this aspect of conservatism ended before my lifetime but people still seem to cling to it.

a deer? a female deer?

And the word 'some' that undoes it.

=

"Some of the Jewish posters make rightish noises when you say stuff about Israel, naturally, because they're all right-wing lunatics."

OR

"Some of the Jewish posters naturally make rightish noises when you say stuff about Israel"

=

"Some of the Jewish posters make rightish noises when you say stuff about Israel, as i'm sure you're all aware of."

when i read momus' post, i read it as the latter. depends on how you read his use of the word 'naturally'. and even then, i'm not trying to say that either statement is correct in any way. just pointing out that it seems less inflammatory (and stupid), in the second instance.
anyway, i think momus was right when he said: "Too inflammatory to just throw into a casual conversation about politics". it's very dangerou to throw these kind of statements about. especially when the jews have their secret networks of mossad agents monitoring all we do and say. they're trying to control all our lives.

That is hilariously fucked up.

i don't think israel is a simple left/right issue (is anything?) but it's funny people have latched on to it this weekend in this thread. i've never said 'yay sharon' or anything, but when people say stupid shit like 'israel has no right to exist', i get a bit queasy, is all.

it's funny what momus said about me, and kind of true. (i think he's a old school high-tory, generally.) but most of our beef of late has been related to 7/7. scuse me for being touchy when people say that taking issue with religious fundamentalism puts me in jack straw's castle.

can't speak for blount, who will probably be embarrassed to have his name associated with yrs truly (there's any number of terrible, sophomoric lefty posts with my name under 'em), but i'll put it this way: i've never seen him lose an argument, and i can't see that he's a 'conservative'. some kind of libertarian, maybe: good for him.

Really? Coz I was thinking 'this guy tries way too hard'

"racist...or transgressive?" jesus christ, man. Read your own sentence again once or twice. Ask yourself: 1) is a pro-Israel stance necessarily a "rightist" stance? Here I'll help you with that one: no. That left & right movements around the world have positioned themselves, respectively, pro-Palestine & pro-Israel doesn't make support of Israel a necessarily rightist position. Plenty of lefties are pro-Palestine because it's part of their cultural positioning travel-kit, the same's true with the right & their motivations; forces outside of the region taking stances say nothing about the political content of Israel/Palestine/etc. I know: for you, guilt by association is everything, but sometimes, if only for the sake of decency, it's best to defer one's prejudices, "natural" or otherwise.

Which brings me to 2), the other thing you might ask yourself about: your use of the word "naturally." Other posters have addressed this already; one has offered you a possible out, but you're not lazy with words, and you know very well what it means in the sentence above. So do I.

"Some of the Jewish posters naturally make rightish noises when you say stuff about Israel, because they want to support the Israeli state, and the Israeli state uses right wing rhetoric to defend its actions."

I could easily imagine someone saying "Some Americans naturally make rightish noises when you say stuff about the war on terror", or even "Some muslims living in the U.S. naturally make leftish noises when you say stuff about the war on terror" (assuming for a moment that "rightish" means vehement support for the Govt's anti-terrorist strategy (incl. War in Iraw, suspension of civil liberties, racial profiling etc.) and "leftish" means criticism of it) - the first implies that a sense of patriotic nationalism might influence a person's opinion, the second that a person's cultural and religious ties might influence their opinion, and such influences are rather "natural" (word is still dodgy, yeah, let's pretend he said "unsurprising".

Are these statements risible? I'm neither American nor Muslim so I'm not sure. Having said that if someone said "Some Australians naturally make rightish noises if anyone mentions refugees and mandatory detention" I wouldn't be upset (except in the sense of being depressed!). If such statements aren't offensive, is a similar statement in relation to Jews/Israel offensive for different reasons?

Is it purely the use of the word "naturally"? Is it purely the assignment of left/right positions with regard to the Israel/Palestine issue (and, when Israel's own Parliament reproduces the left/right split Momus is assigning, is this illegitimate?)? Is something else going on? I dunno!

Yes (for me, anyway).

Also, there's the assignment of "Jews" to the task of "supporting Israel", implying that Jews are the only people who could or would do such a thing. It's kind of like saying "black Americans are naturally a bit sensitive when it comes to racial profiling" as if that's a black problem, and not everybody's problem.

.... Except of course that not everyone will recognise that this is the case, so that the groups that come out and complain about racial profiling, apart from dedicated civil liberties groups, are groups that are likely to be the victims of racial profiling... ie. they are more likely to be sensitive!

Likewise many people might support the right of Israel to hold onto the Gaza strip (or some other political issue at stake in the general Israel/Palestine conundrum), but the only time this is, say, actually talked about at my uni campus in any public fashion is when the Jewish student groups hold rallies explicitly stating this position.

Of course it would not occur to me to see something sinister in the fact that the groups who are seeking to defend Israel's actions (in Australia at any rate) tend to be Jewish.

Working for the Mossad!

Shadows, deception, sneaking under windows.
Walk on in costume and exit out a window.
A gesture from a stranger, a signal on a watch.
Tonight you're laughing in a bar, slipping poison in a scotch.

Working for the Mossad!

Plant a bomb im the calmn fronds of a palm.
Hop a cab to the red eye to Dar Es Salaam.
Giza to Gaza to Derna to Dubai,
You're a stranger at the airport with a twinkle in the eye

Also, there's the assignment of "Jews" to the task of "supporting Israel", implying that Jews are the only people who could or would do such a thing. It's kind of like saying "black Americans are naturally a bit sensitive when it comes to racial profiling" as if that's a black problem, and not everybody's problem.
I don't like that comparison at all. People of all ethnicities care about racial profiling because it's a basic civil rights issue. You can't extend that to Israel's existence.

Most Jews may be pro Israel but that doesn't 'naturally' make them rightish. I hate this pigeon-holing and, as I say, am distressed by this thread.

No it isn't.

People of all ethnicities care about racial profiling because it's a basic civil rights issue.

Lots of non-Palestinian people stand up for Palestinian rights. I don't see many white, self-proclaimed liberals abandoning the Palestinian cause exclusively to the Palestinians. However, it's being implied on this thread that the Jews are responsible for supporting Israel, and anyone else who dares to do so is at risk for being outed as a conservative. Whatever.

Support for Israel is not exclusively a Jewish responsibility. If you care about an issue, then it doesn't matter what ethnicity you are. You make it your business to care.

-- s1ocki (slytus...), August 14th, 2005.

OTM.

Hey, I like how the "some" has been changed into "most" here!

milo what part of "Jewish posters naturally make rightist noises" is giving you trouble?

And wait, what happened to "some" in that gloss too?

Objection 1: But there are some Jews who do not support Israel!
Objection 2: And there are some people who support Israel who are not Jews!
Objection 3: And there is no connection between support for Israel and support for its right wing policies!

Conclusion: No definitive statement can be made about the ethnicity of those who support Israel, the Jewish state, pending further empirical investigation. Furthermore, no conclusion can be drawn about the political leanings of those who support Israel, or of the political position of the Israeli state itself. Further empirical observation of the behaviour of the Israeli government is needed, but hasty decisions should be avoided, at least until the perimeter fence is complete.

Your search - "obtuse foppish wanker" - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.

don't get me wrong, i completely understand that this issue raises strong emotions, but there is seriously no need to get so fucking touchy about comments, especially when not in the context of a proper discussion of the issues. i'm guessing there are plenty of israel-related threads out there.

basically what i'm saying is: why can't we all just get along?

You're speaking of these people as if they exist in a political vacuum, as if people spontaneously wake up and decide to stand up for Palestinian rights. Whereas in fact the very concern with the rights of Palestinians that is expressed in Western countries is articulated almost solely within a leftist discourse. If a non-Palestinian person began lecturing me on how Palestinians are being oppressed, I would prima facie assume that they were left wing until they demonstrated otherwise.

Whereas, the very insistence that no real consideration of Palestinian rights can begin until the terrorism stops is, to the extent that it is articulated by non-Israeli and non-Jewish groups, articulated within the discourse of the right.

Of course there are:
a) Jewish people who don't support Israel
b) Jewish people who support Israel but from a left-wing perspective
c) left-wing non-Jews who support Israel
d) right-wing non-Jews who don't support Israel

But the existence of these groups doesn't change the fact that arguments supporting the actions of the Israeli state are - outside of Israel - hegemonically aggregated with right-wing political perspectives... anymore than the existence of Log Cabin Republicans or conservative FLAP members changes the fact that pro-GLBT arguments are hegemonically aggregated with left-wing political perspectives. On the whole people are more likely to reflect such hegemonic combinations than not - as these hegemonic combinations are those which are reproduced in Govts, in the media, in universities... I can't think of an Australian paper whose postion on Israel/Palestine appears at odds with its position on the political perspective.

Ironically, I think the cracks in these hegemonic combinations have only begun to appear (for the first time in several years) since the moves by the Sharon Govt to remove the settlers from the Gaza strip. For the first time a lot of media organs appear to be a bit confused about which line they're supposed to take.

You picked a great day to try to pin down a definition of the Israeli right-wing.

How would you 'know' that? I don't think I've ever said five words on Israel/Palestine at ILX - in fact because I think the issue is simply too complicated and removed from my existence to take a position on. The most extreme I get on Israel is "gee I wish the IDF would stop killing Palestinian children" and "gee, I wish suicide bombers would stop killing Israeli children."

But as long as we're on "simple grammar," let us read what Momus actually wrote. Some of the Jewish posters naturally make rightish noises when you say stuff about Israel.

Oh, look at the there modifying clause - "when you say stuff about Israel." Gee, when you remove all the modifiers the sentence looks completely different - imagine that, huh?

Now, I'm on record as finding Momus in general to be a pseud wanker - but he has shown no signs of being a bigot as he is accused of here.

I don't necessarily disagree. That's why I followed that sentence with "You can disagree, but it's hardly anti-Semitic."

Lots of non-Palestinian people stand up for Palestinian rights.
Right, and that has a close analogy with 'racial profiling' because both are considered basic human rights/civil rights issues.

The existence of Israel (taking a pro-Israel stand) has no such cachet. There's no basic human rights issue at stake when deciding whether or not to defend Israel's creation or continued existence as a 'Jewish state.'

You really think so? I don't. It looks like racist claptrap either way, with a nice li'l exit clause just in case. "Some of the Jewish posters naturally" is the point past which one need not read unless the suprising conclusion is something like "...come from Jewish families" or something.

He's drawing a conclusion that doesn't seem to be without merit - Jewish posters are more likely than non-Jewish posters to have a deep, emotional relationship to the existence and struggle of Israel.

You can disagree with his arguments - that Jewish people hold Israel in higher esteem than non-Jews, that the defense of Israel is right-wing nature, etc. - but calling him a bigot is lazy and untrue (on this).

Yeah, I hate those Straw man arguments.

Abbas: We support this withdrawal, but it's just a beginning. We want to see the 1967 borders restored.

Announcer on BBC: Some see this as just a token gesture. While they're pulling out of Gaza, the Israelis are reinforcing their position in the far more important West Bank and Jerusalem.

You are my brother and I claim my five pounds!

who is deciding what 'right-wing' means here? i don't think the current noninterventionist stance of the 'left' in britain is universally and for all time a 'left' persepctive; in fact, it has a lot in common with oild tory noninterventionism.

How opportune this came up, because it's the most clear-cut instance of how I differ from the campus lefty massive. Even people who have never previously performed at a satisfactory level academically should be given a chance at college, but to continue to indulge their failings once they're there is stupid. I hope I don't sound like someone's evil dad.

I'm also not trying to resolve things; my ability to influence the policies of Sharon is somewhat limited. The best chance I have is to try and help build up a greater understanding of why those policies are wrong (in both senses of wrong) and to that end, I'm intervening here.

"arguments supporting the actions of the Israeli state are - outside of Israel - hegemonically aggregated with right-wing political perspectives."

my argument's not about the policies as such but the other 'political perspectives' they're being 'hegemonically aggregated' with. i suppose i'm asking for specifics, and about the concept of 'hegemonic aggregation'.

To do that on the basis of ethnicity / religion is even more 'not left-wing' and makes it more situated in the 'right-wing' camp.

Hmm, actually not sure about this Dave, whilst facism can clearly be situated in a right-wing schema and usually involves much of what you say, teh Common Acgricultural Policy, a definitively (European) socialist construction also has much of the effects you state are not more left-wing.

Okay, by this I mean that in the public discourse I'm exposed to (I've tried to be careful to mention what and where there is generated - primarily the Australian media, the official statements of Australian political and community groups etc. But also a smattering of UK and US-situated media) explicit support for the actions of the Israeli state over and against the grievances of Palestinians - as opposed to the more ambivalent "it takes two to tango" line which liberal democrat writers tend to go with - is put forward in tandem with:

- arguments that the war in Iraq was justified
- arguments that the war on terror necessitates restricting immigration and intake of refugees, as well as the restriction of certain civil liberties
- arguments that policies of multiculturalism are a primary cause of inter-cultural hatred which in turn fuels terrorism.
- arguments that the overwhelming majority of impoverished nations and cultures owe their impoverishment to the corruption and/or poor management of their governments or de facto governments, and that providing foreign aid to these nations merely entrenches their impoverishment

I wouldn't claim that all of these are automatically right-wing positions (and indeed, the first and fourth argument have often been put forward from left-wing perspectives, although probably not together), but they are rarely expressed all together as part of an overall political perspective (i.e. hegemonically aggregated) by any person or group who doesn't self-identify as politically conservative.

Furthermore, many (but not all) of the media organs and political groups that advocate these positions also tend to be sympathetic toward arguments for:
- the deregulation of Industrial Relations laws
- low taxes and low welfare expenditure
- the inappropriateness of extending formal legal equality to certain minorities such as homosexuals
- the value of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in class rooms
- the need to institutionalise, reinstitutionalise or preserve certain traditions which speak to a nation's dominant or original national, cultural or religious identity.
- the superiority of a user-pays education system.

Again, these aren't all obviously right-wing positions, but when expressed together they map out the co-ordinates for what I assume we can agree is a right-wing political identity.

Of course it is entirely possible to detach a strong support for the Israeli state from such hegemonic aggregations and articulate it from some non-right or even left-wing perspective, but in practice the overwhelming tendency has been toward the opposite.

this is even more indefensible than the 'trife is black' thing!

woo, is it hot in here? (fingers collar nervously)

"a) Jewish people who don't support Israel
b) Jewish people who support Israel but from a left-wing perspective
c) left-wing non-Jews who support Israel
d) right-wing non-Jews who don't support Israel"

was irrelevant because of the hegemon discussed above (which as you've pointed out is not all that seamless: being pro-iraq war is not necessarily 'right-wing').

but i don't understand the relevance of this to the question of your position on israel/palestine. if you just swing behind 'the left' because that's what the aggregate of hegemony tells you to do, then who's the winner? the thing to do is break the connections you've described.

Anyway the interesting thing about Israel/Palestine is that, while there's plenty of left-wing hawks who get editorial space, very few left-wing pro-Israel types ever appear in the papers over here. In fact I can't remember coming across an article defending the wall, the military incursions etc. from a left-wing perspective. I'd be interested to see one!

It is precisely because the hegemon seems so unusually successful on either side (with regard to this debate) that I'm hesitant to take a position for fear of adopting a readymade rather than utilising any critical thought. I think all of my posts here have been "meta" as a result of this caution/cowardice.

I like Tracer H, a lot. I have no recriminations against him!

There seems to be a denial going on here of the massive ideological configurations that do pattern so much political debate and that are, in a certain sense, the rules of the political game. To the extent that we all "play at politics", we learn to identify these ideas, to read them between the lines. The kind of linked policies that Tim spells out above are widely accepted as conservative positions.

Thomas Frank's book "What's The Matter With Kansas" is about how the US has become utterly polarised between left and right-voting states. We've gone from people in the 90s thinking that centrism and "the end of history" had made the language of left and right irrelevant, to the completely opposite position of a radically ideological tussle which splits the US in two. (Not to mention families; see Kate's post about her brother above.)

What's interesting is how arbitrary these "packages" of ideas are. In some instances policies which one were thought of as defining a leftist position have come to be aligned with a rightist position. Frank gives one example:

"We are in an environment where Republicans talk constantly about class -- in a coded way, to be sure -- but where Democrats are afraid to bring it up."

That's a reversal of the traditional view that the left could only benefit from fostering class consciousness whereas the right could only lose by it.

But despite paradoxes like that, left / right is one of the oppositions that won't go away in our culture, like man / woman or black / white. Whether you like it or not, they're "differences that make a difference".

The differences are real, but their importances seem to be contextually variable.

maybe it's the lack of clarity over the "stuff". like if someone said, 'israel ought not exist', i think these 'rightish' noises would be in order.

Completely agree. "Differences that make a difference" can become "differences that don't make a difference" (eye colour or handedness, for instance). Left / right seemed to be slipping away into a big warm swamp of social-democratic "third way" fudge in the 90s, but came back early this decade thanks, I think, at least in part, to just two men: Karl Rove and Osama Bin Laden.

I hope that someone can help me with this, and that no-one is offended in any way by my question - eg, by my relative ignorance.

i think this is a cause for hope (you KNOW i'm partly fucking around here, momus): it means the left doesn't have to make do with bell-ends like stalin or mao.

Clearly no-one is going to be sticking Kim Jong Il posters on their wall. But no-one is going to be sticking Hardt and Negri on their wall either. You need someone who has some power, but is also iconic, an ideological figurehead. Castro is too old and has been there too long. The appalling thought is that the closest we now have to a figurehead like John Lennon (not that he went very far left) is Bono.

-- N_RQ (bl0cke...), August 15th, 2005. (later)

it's also an opportunity for people to stop caring whether they are advancing "left" or "right" wing opinions and simply attempt to fix problems with what seems to be the best solutions at the time. im not saying we should all live in a post-ideological utopia, but it would be nice if we could acknowledge the inherent limitations of ideology every now and then.

tags like "conservative" and "liberal" are just handy distractions most of the time.

Issue leaders ARE ideological leaders. Very few people self-describe their position as ideological, but in fact it is precisely the attempt to distance oneself from ideology that is the ideological move par-excellence. (e.g. isn't the desire to "simply attempt to fix problems with what seems to be the best solutions at the time" the precise creed of "third way" expert management ideology?)

Finally, though, there's the image of Brecht as a left wing sage, despite his differing positions, and that's an important morale-boosting image. I think it's important that people have a visceral politics, an inbuilt, reflexive revulsion against figures like Bush and Sharon (and yes, Bin Laden). I talk about this a bit in my mini-essay Emotional Communist.

It seems to me that if you don't have an instinctual revulsion against Bush (and, increasingly, Tony Blair, a natural conservative) then no amount of issue-based mini-battles will prevail against his worldview.

I stand corrected, Althusser!

More specifically, he said: "I never know, although I use the term myself occasionally, quite what people mean when they talk about multiculturalism. If they mean people living in their separate cultures and never integrating at any point together, I think that's actually certainly not what I mean by the word and I don't think it's what most people would regard as sensible."

The Oxford English dictionary, however, seems to give the word the definition Tony Blair most fears: multiculturalism is "The characteristics of a multicultural society; (also) the policy or process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within such a society are maintained or supported."

Blair denied that "multiculturalism" meant "not integrating" and stated that, even if it did mean that, "not integrating" was not sensible, whatever word might cover it.

Columbia University Press Encyclopaedia links multiculturalism with pluralism:

"multiculturalism or cultural pluralism, a term describing the coexistence of many cultures in a locality, without any one culture dominating the region. By making the broadest range of human differences acceptable to the largest number of people, multiculturalism seeks to overcome racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination."

Houghton Mifflin links it to the Identity Politics of the 1970s:

"It became a significant force in American society in the 1970s and 1980s as African-Americans, Latinos, and other ethnic groups explored their own history."

Now Blair is trying to push that whole raft of ideas, stuff that seemed tidily integrated into his "Third Way", back off the agenda. Some cultures are better than others. It's okay to bomb others to freedom. Civilisation is pitted against barbarism. And so on.

It's interesting, I hear this kind of argument a lot on ILE too! Even on this thread!

There's nothing automatically left-wing about culutral politics if your privelige the economic, but it follows (to me) that life chances are reduced arbitrarily and unhappiness distributed arbitrarily by current distributions of wealth and power, then you should also care about life chances and unhappiness reduced by cultural factors, which makes islamofascists and others right-wing in such a schema.

There's lots of left-figures to inspire, but there's a lot more lcoalised figures - there's few left inspirations on a national or global level, because the left has still not got the hang of winning, and prefers to focus on the 10% it might have with someone than the 90% they support.

yes of course! i misspoke: just as there is no such thing as "no theory" there is no such thing as "no ideology"--the problem i was attempting to address, however, is people's need to identify themselves with a particular ideology at the expense of, well, everything else. (and perhaps this is just my own ideology here)

me too

I'm struggling to see this as a problem. The alternative is that you act ideologically without seeing the ideology underlying your act or choice. Surely it makes more sense to have a framework?

I'd be pissed at them too if they were blocking the road by my house. Protestors are kinda dumb and often inconsiderate? Can we admit this? If they were here, where Bush has more than one neighbour, I strongly doubt they'd be any more appreciated. And 90% of us voted Kerry.

-- TOMBOT (sheeha...) (webmail), August 15th, 2005 10:38 AM

Yeah, I do think there's automatically something horrible about Moore. I don't have a problem with Sheehan demanding accountability from the White House, but associating with Mr Moore is either a distressing sign of lazy recidivist thinking or an indication that she's smarter than we think. Look at the publicity. Having Moore on your side generates headlines and threads like this.

-- Alfred Soto (sotoal...) (webmail), August 15th, 2005 12:33 PM.

Have you considered the actions of the Crawford Peace House? You think Moore's got credibility with anyone but the choir he preaches to? You think that appearing on Air America makes her any different than someone who goes on Sean Hannity or Limbaugh? The vitriol she gets is what she hath sown. She's not trying to make a sensible argument or trying to convince those who otherwise might not share her opinion. She's enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame and playing right into the hands of her (now) political enemies.

-- don weiner (dandydonweine...) (webmail), August 15th, 2005 12:58 PM.

this is the thread about Cindy Sheehan and her anti-war vigil

would the folks involved in the "Justice Sunday" conservative events qualify?

Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, John Ashcroft, the Walton Family (?), Richard Mellon Scaife. The latter two are not public so much as behind-the-scenes financiers.

I think this question really deserves it's own thread.

Or messageboard.

xpost

OCD, assburgers...

seriously, i just posted this for shits n giggles and sat back as it predictably blew up

-- The Ghost of Black Elegance (djperry@

Dan otm as per bloody usual. I was going to say this thread = the stupidest shit ever, but in actual fact it's something like the eighth stupidest shit ever.

No I think you're right milo, and I think most of "the left" agree with you - Cindy Sheehan for example becomes a figurehead insofar as she argues the war should never have happened, but consensus typically falters when it comes down to what to do next.

except that she hasn't really been about what to do next, has she? it's been a continual, deliberate mischaracterization of her stance to say that she calls for total immediate withdrawal.

(I'm staying RIGHT out of this thread tho, too much absurdism)

This is just silly. US involvement in Iraq is an ongoing issue, not to mention a damned expensive one in blood and treasure. The question of whether the person who currently controls our Iraq policy has engaged in a knowing, purposeful and continuing campaign of deception in regard to that policy is (to coin a phrase) urgent and key.

exactly. as mentioned on the other thread(christ, parallel convos on the same board), trying to persuade supporters by chanting "Bush lied; thousands died" won't do shit. Of course politicians lie, these people think, they have to sometimes lie to us for our own good.

better solutions than 'pull out now'.

i agree, too. One of the fucked up things about this particular war is that they have fucked up so many options(e.g. pissing off world allies) as to changing the situation. Insurgencies/civil wars last for YEARS.

(FWIW, I think just "pulling out" is a logistical impossibility at this stage, anyway. I think we shouldn't be increasing the size of our armed presence in Iraq.)

I think I have an idea who John Ashcroft is. Can someone confirm, or say more about him?

Or, we stay a few more years, and then there is an all-out civil war, and then a nuclear Iran gets involved. Either way I think just pulling out or just hanging around for a few more years isn't a strategy. It's the absence of strategy.

Cor - it looks Ashcroft is the geezer for me after all.

Walmart owners/heirs. I'm not sure how "fundamentalist" they are though.

Bill Frist may actually be a better mention in an article though since Ashcroft is no longer a cabinet member and Frist is the Senate majority leader and '08 Presidential hopeful. Aside from being a fundamentalist christian, Frist is also a doctor who believes it is possible to transmit AIDS through tears and sweat. When he was in med school he apparently made a regular practice of adopting cats from the local shelter and experimenting on them.

that's my kind of guy!

Maybe I will get a chance to alter it to Frist later, or something.

dude, i keep tellin' ya; the library section on rotten.com has some great stuff.

Although the bio on Chyna is NSFW and a touch-too-graphic for the faint-of-tranny.

Wow. The goggles, etc.

I feel so alienated by politics today. Some of what passes for conservativism on the internet makes me a "closet conservative"! Ranting and raving about "Muslims" or "people taking our rights away" and waving a gun around is NOT conservative behavior!

It's true, waving a gun around is just broad-spectrum American behavior ; )

I miss Barry Goldwater!

I miss Theodore Roosevelt.

(That's about as far as I'm willing to take it, tbh)

I have a lot of conservatives bound and gagged in my closet, and won't let them out until December 2012

TR was a weird fellow -- a champion of physical ardor and believer in noblesse oblige rather than a true progressive, much less conservative. One of the great what-ifs of 20th century politics: if he'd lived to win the 1920 election (in which he would have been the GOP candidate and likely winner).

woah this thread. thank god i did not participate when it was going on

^^^ all Momus threads evah