(Please welcome Matt Taibbi, author of The Great Derangement, in the comments — jh)
Matt Taibbi writes beautifully. I really can’t think of anyone around today who can match his gift of language and political insight, his ability to gaze unflinchingly at the decay infesting the soul of the American body politic. It is something unique.
If his enfant terrible status wasn’t secured when he was forced out of Uzbekistan for writing critically of the country’s president, it certainly was by the time he departed New York Press in the wake of his article "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope." Which would have been admirable sheerly for the fact that Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Michael Bloomberg and Matt Drudge all denounced it, but it was with the follow-up piece,"Keep Pope Alive" — an in-you-face "fuck you" to the PC police — that Taibbi in my book achieved icon status.
That took some stones.
(And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his canonical piece on Joe Lieberman, in which he referred to Lieberman’s mom as "Ernest Borgnine in pearls. Lieberhack Dan Gerstein sent spittle-flecked copies out in toto as a press release, an example of the deranged, cruel invective being hurled at Holy Joe. )
Sorry, that one was for me.
Anyway, to the current work. I was reading a dead tree version of the New York Times last week, where articles about food shortages, drought and peak oil were butressed with one which finds Inhofe railing about global warming. Evidently last year had the worst cold spell in Oklahoma in 30 years, ergo it doesn’t exist. "You can’t have it both ways," said Inhofe.
It was with this absurd juxtaposition in my head that I cracked The Great Derangement:
The best cover our corrupt politicians have for their behavior is the very banality of their crimes; to quote Tolstoy, their corruption is "most ordinary and therefore most horrible." To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight — it suggests at least a grand hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil — but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about.
That’s why people will think up all sorts of crazy things to explain what’s wrong, long before they get around to the actual truth. But it’s the simple, unvarnished reality right out in the open that’s most frightening.
Indeed. It is somewhat comforting to think that there is some grand order underlying everything — be it the hand of God or the miscreants on the Bush administration. And thus Taibbi hits the road to come face to face with the true believers, visiting the church of John Hagee and a group within the 9/11 truth movement. He sees them as respectively right and left wing manifestations of the same impulse, but also inhabitants of alternate universes which simply do not embrace a common set of facts. It creates the perfect petri dish for politicos like Inhofe who want to slap a "for sale" sign on the back of America (Inhofe received over $300,000 in campaign contributions from Big Oil between 2002-2007 and has somewhat unsurprisingly called global warming a "hoax.")
Would that such cynicism were the exclusive purview of Republicans, however. Taibbi looks at the failure of the 2006 Democratic majority in Congress to do just about anything they were elected to do, and wonders if they aren’t responsible for the popularity of the 9/11 Truth movement:
Hard as I try to get these concepts out of my head, terms like "the people" and "the ruling class" are always in my thinking, and in the case of 9/11 Truth and the peace movement, it was now very hard for me to avoid the simplistic notion of a voiceless subject population abandoned by its political parent class, i.e, "the people’ cut loose by the Democratic Party.
All along I couldn’t help but see the Truther movement as a symptom of a society whose political institutions had simply stopped addressing the needs of its citizens. When people can’t trust the media, and don’t have real political choices, and are denied access to the decison-making process, and can’t even be sure that their votes are being counted — when even their activist advocates are lunching with the Man in fancy restaurants in Georgetown — they will eventually act out on their own. And when they do, who can blame them if the cause they choose to pursue is a little bit crazy?
Much of Taibbi’s humor is derived from mocking his subjects, winding them up provoking them. It often comes across as condescending and uncharitable, but in reading the Great Derangement I felt like it didn’t spring from a sense of superiority — rather, he feels blame for the current state of affairs can’t be simply be laid at the feet of politicians and the media. That ultimately people have a choice in the matter. At one point, he looks at two little boys standing in the Capitol, "blank eyes, neither old enough or guilty enough yet to be villains in the American drama."
It’s increasingly hard for people to negotiate their own lives, and it’s awfully seductive to hand over the decision making process to some snake-oil salesman who promises to explain it all. But in the end, Taibbi has a fundamental respect for these people in his expectation that they are making choices that they need to take responsibility for. And those who make bad and feeble choices are, in his mind, villains in the story.
If I have a critique of the book, or of Taibbi’s work as a whole, is that he is often cast too rigidly in the mold of Hunter Thompson, either by his own design or external forces. I often feel like it pushes him into corners where he’s uncomfortable, or that he just gets lazy sometimes and reaches for the easy Thompson-esque phrase when he doesn’t know what else to do. I think he’s remarkably gifted and it’s when he gives himself the license just to be Matt Taibbi that he’s at his best.
Well, he’s written an amazing book and he’s with us today. Please welcome Matt Taibbi in the comments.
Related posts:
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Matt Taibbi, The Great American Bubble Machine
- Talking Health Care Reform With Matt Taibbi
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Matthew Kerbel, Netroots: Online Progressives and the Transformation of American Politics
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Hillary Rettig, The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes Robert Wright: The Evolution of God
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Welcome, Matt. And thanks for being here today. How goes the book tour?
Matt, Welcome to the Lake.
Jane, thank you for hosting this book salon.
Hi Jane. How goes it? Book tour is fine, thank you. Not too much travel thankfully.
Matt, I’ve almost finished your book, and am loving it. I found your tales of Hagee’s church both chilling and terribly sad. I can’t imagine feeling as helpless and beset by life as those folks seem to be. Do you think that there’s any hope for real reform after the elections when (PLEASE GOD) there is potentially a large Democratic majority in Congress?
Am I doing this wrong, or are there just no questions yet?
Folks may not have found their way “upstairs” yet. I’ll drop down to the last thread and let them know you’re here. I know there were people who were anxious to chat with you.
Dear Marion –
I’m pretty skeptical of the idea that “reform” will come after there is a large majority of Democrats in congress. The Democrats in 2006 promised widespread reform of the earmarking problem. What happened? In the first year they were in power, the mount of money spent on earmarks went up 30% and the number of earmarks went from under 3000 to over 11,000. And they just abandoned plans to impose a one-year earmark ban. That combined with their halfhearted efforts ending the war…
After finishing my reading of TGD, I can see where “not too much travel” is something to be thankful for!
(I’m a Lutheran pastor and I laughed out loud at your descriptions of the times that Martin Luther came up in the conversations with Hagee’s folks. Thanks for including those tidbits!)
Curious to know what you think of the latest chapter in the Scott McClellan saga. Your description of him as a”gopher-faced administration spokescreature”, “the cheapest kind of political hack, a greedy little bum making a living by throwing his hat on the ground and juggling lemons for pennies” — kind of said it all.
You’re fine, takes a minute for folks to dial in.
Sigh… I was terribly afraid you were going to say that. I, however, am an incurable optimist…
Folks are reading Jane’s fine intro. We’re getting ready to roll.
Hey Jane. Don’t know about you, but my take on Scott McClellan is, everyone’s got to make money. Gas prices are tough and all. The price for betraying the Bush adminstration is about to go down significantly. He picked just the right time to flip and got a great deal. Wouldn’t you?
Heh. The folks at World O’ Crap called Scotty a “gibbering bipedal sweat gland.”
Scott always reminded me of the guy who got wedgied in high school. The bad wedgie, too, the one all the way over your head.
I’m hoping the rest of the cabal are so busy getting their own ‘memoirs’ ready that they won’t have time to do too much more harm. Not that I forgives the DEMS anything! Wimps.
It’s a fabulously beautiful day, and I hate to leave ya hangin’, but I just can’t be indoors any more today. I will, however, get your book read. Thanks for all your previous works as well.
B…but Rahm said the 463 billion CR in 2007 was an “earmark-free bill!”
Are you saying that’s not true?
I need a moment here…
Matt, Do you think the Dems are unresponsive to reform because organized labor is so diminished?
Gannon– I understand. I wouldn’t be in here talking to me either.
Oh, lordy, yes. Matt, don’t ever quit…
I read your book and enjoyed it to the point where I wrote you via smirkingchimp.com but got no reply. I asked a few questions about your dismissal of the “Truthers” and 9/11. Here’s a few questions.
1) I understand you cannot use a cell phone on an airplane. I’m told the reason is that the plane’s speed interferes with the handshaking that takes place as the call passes from tower to tower. Do you know if this is correct? If it is how do you explain the crash in PA where the passengers revolted because they were made of what happened by cell phone.
2) How do you explain the Saudis getting picked up right after 9/11 when all planes but theirs were grounded? It was before we knew 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.
3) Was there gold bullion in the basement of one of the towers that was removed prior to 9/11? That shouldn’t be too hard to verify.
4) How do you explain the third tower coming down when apparently it was not seriously damaged?
Matt, one of the things we keep working for here is “more and BETTER Democrats.” Do you think it’s possible to get “better” Congresscritters, or will they all be sucked down into the slime no matter how idealistic they are?
Matt, it’s a powerful book. Thank you for the passion you put into writing it. Chapter 8, on the 9/11 fiasco, is one of the best written summations of that madness I’ve seen yet.
P.S. Kara and Marcus Deyerin wanted me to say hello.
PAR4 –
The lack of discipline in organized labor is one problem, sure. I’m constantly amazed when I go to labor events to listen to labor leaders talk about how they “have” to support the free-trader wing of the Democratic party, even early in the primary season when there are more purely pro-labor candidates (like Kucinich or Gephardt 4 years ago) still in the race. It’s totally counterproductive.
Here’s one for you, Matt . . .
Along with your descriptions of Hagee’s crowd, the 9-11 Truthers, and members of Congress (and their staffers), you also make brief mentions of the political press corps. I’d love to hear more about the press in DC.
For example, your description of earmarks in budget bills and continuing resolutions and how earmarks work was quite well done, yet it seems that few political journalists want to dig into the details of bills to find this kind of information. From your perspective, is this the result of a certain laziness on the part of reporters, direction given to them by their editors (”give me he said/she said, not boring budget details”), pressure from bean counters (”conflict sells papers, not dry budget explanations”), or all of the above?
Matt,
I have not had the opportunity to read your book, but from Jane’s intro, it sounds like a pretty good read.
And I’d also say that it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be pushed into “Hunter Thompson” territory for quotes and writing.
I used to literally wait for the mail man every two week in ‘72 to catch Hunter’s most recent rants in Rolling Stone. He had most of the Beltway types nailed even then.
Sorry you picked up a Truther on this thread. I finally know how embarrassing the right wing cranks are to the country club Republicans.
We just had an invasion of them on the previous thread, unfortunately, because I defended them against Michael Reagan’s call to have them shot.
Thanks for all your work, Matt.
Enjoyed your chat at Wapo the other day, too.
Do you have any thoughts on the recent “ho- hum” response both from most of American media and Congress to the fact that the long- delayed Phase 2 reveals that the administration lied often and intentionally?
Is the Dem leadership really too self- absorbed to do anything about it?
For folks who have not read the book yet, Matt’s fourteen page invented conversation between Cheney, Feith, Wolfowitz, Irv Kristol, and others to “plan” the 9-11 attacks is priceless!
I guess you mean me. Sorry but I think the questions are legitimate. I agree that some Truther complaints i.e. that a cruise missle hit the Pentagon rather than a plane are preposterous. Other questions they raise are not.
And a question: Do you think that we’re seeing more people getting into that extremist area where right folds into left? The fallout from the Clinton/Obama campaign and all the bitterness being exposed on the internet is frustrating to me. I tell myself that the angry Clinton voters threatening to vote for McCain out of spite are a tiny minority, but there does seem to be a lot of them.
Is it your sense that more and more previously reasonable people are losing it?
Dear Ekunin,
You go to bed at night feeling fine, then you wake up in the morning and you’re there again. You just don’t go away.
A general and a specific response to your question. Specifically, about the cell phones. The options to believe here are:
1) The phone calls happened and there’s some confusion about how.
2) The phone calls didn’t happen and large numbers of ordinary people whose loved ones were murdered in the attacks went along with the deception in saying they did, for no obvious reason.
3) The “conspirators” faked the calls somehow using heretofore unknown technology, again for no obvious reason. AS if the whole thing wouldn’t have worked without that detail.
Number one is, by a factor of at least a hundred, the least absurd option. Tell me where Barbara Olson is right now and I’ll start thinking that maybe those attacks were faked.
General observation: where is all this vigilance and organization when it comes to real problems? Like ending the war, or congressional corruption?
Dear David -
Kara and Marcus? Jesus. Tell them hello, I guess. I assume they heard the eXile is getting shut down.
They shouldn’t be shot, no.
But there’s lots of them wandering around Austin and they should be, in my opinion, mocked relentlessly. Truthers and Ron Paul supporters all over the place, invading previously normal, if extremely liberal, places like the Austin City Limits Festival.
Amanda,
I see the number of people who were right voting left and were left voting right as a positive. I think the arbitrary red-blue distinctions seem to be losing their force a little bit. ROn Paul’s campaign was a good example. A lot of lefties and their conservative relatives werereunited thanks to that campaign. The knee-jerk hatred between both sides has been a major obstacle to real discussion about anything in this country for too long.
Brings new meaning to “Keep Austin Weird,” doesn’t it?
Welcome, Matt. Really enjoyed the book.
One question — did you find that 9/11 Truther groups were limited to the left? It seems to me that I’ve caught of whiff of it on the far right, the McVeigh/black helicopter crowd.
Great work.
Matt, wow! Welcome! You are great on Bill Maher, I hope you’ll be on more when he gets back!
No one puts it quite like you do, Matt!
hehe
Anymore TV spots coming up on your book tour?
One of the things that surprised me was the amount of support Ron Paul was getting from the military community (which is huge down here). I guess due to his cries to end the war…
Yep, couldn’t agree more.
Good point. But what concerned me was how few people actually knew anything about him other than he was anti-war and pro-legalization of marijuana. I mean, these are good things, but before you start writing checks to a candidate, maybe you should know more about him.
How do you feel about Obama as a unifying candidate?
matt… just read your piece in rolling stone on mccain.put chills down my spine. What do you think is effective ways for those of us working outside the party to respond to the hate and fear attacks.
robert greenwald
Hey Blue Texan–
Yes, you’re right. There’s definitely some overlap there. You’ll find especially that a lot of the balck-helicopter folks who were left hanging when the OKC conspiracy theories fizzled out joined up with the Truthers. A great many aspects of Truther lore are basically ripped off wholesale from OKC bombing lore — like the seismological “evidence,” the supposed inability of the official explanation to account for the building failure, and so on. So there’s some overlap, but the overwhelming vibe of the Truther movement is knee-jerk anti-Bush anti-Republican hatred, and that is much more an outgrowth of “liberal” (I hate that word) politics than right-wing politics. I see it an awful lot at peace marches and such, which depresses me.
where did they get the idea to name themselves “truthers”? At the Ministry of Silly Names shop next to the Ministry of Silly Walks?
I believe the gold was found during the “search and rescue” portions and it was after the gold was found that the search missions were ended by Rudy Giuliani. Which was why the NYFD was so adamantly against Rudy in his run for the Presidency.
As for Tower 7, my understanding was taht was a controlled demolition to bring it down so that it could not do further damage to surrounding buildings.
We just had death threats by Michael Reagan against a “Truther”. I find your comments objectionable and out of line. People are still dying from the thousands of tons of toxic dust from the 9-11 attacks. Those and other issues have been concealed (however badly the coverup has been). But it is obvious Saudi Arabia attacked the United States on 9-11. Thankfully FDL has allowed reasoned debate but “truthers” are our allies.
Hi Robert. I don’t know what the answer is there. I suspect that this election will be a great test of America’s ability to rise above the old red-baiting traitor-hunting game in national politics. Obama is a black, Harvard-educated candidate with a peace profile and associations with “radicals.” If you can win an election with that resume, it might dissuade future opponents from trying to win with those kinds of attacks. So the best thing is to help him get elected, probably.
I apologize for feeding the trolls.
I think it’s a team sport today.
Ah, very interesting re: OKC. I swear there’s some right wing “libertarian” who has a radio show in Austin who insists 9/11 was an inside job.
Again, loved the book.
thanks matt. going step further, roll of all of us to attack head on the lies? effective ways to hit back at the traitor hunting game?
robert greenwald
I feel pretty good about Obama as a unifying candidate. I hav eno idea if he’s honest or not or whether his administration will be a positive change. But he’s taken the high road in this campaign in terms of not trying to win by smearing his opponents and that is a big, big step. Coming from me this sounds strange, but we need to reinject some civility into our politics and Obama has done a good job of laying off the scorched-earth tactics we’ve gotten so used to. In my opinion.
The suggestion that they be “mocked mercilessly” Amanda mentioned above is also a very potent way to respond.
Welcome Matt. Just got the book. I think you’re the person to ask this. There’s a line near the end of Easy Rider where Fonda’s character says, “We blew it” or something like that. Did we? And when/how did it happen? Or do we still have a chance to fix it?
* tackles jane *
I think you are magnificent. How can I find out when you’ll be online like this (I stumbled on this), making personal appearances or be on radio or TV? Also, any plans for a European promo tour?
So much for Occam’s Razor.
I’m looking forward to reading this book, Matt. Thanks for stopping by!
Honestly Robert I think the key thing is to ignore it. It’s like that scene in Manchurian candidate (the old one) where Angela Landsbury explains why it doesn’t matter how many communists they say are in the State Department: if people argue about the number, they’re at least arguing about the right thing. “They’re not saying are there communists in the SD, they’er saying how many communists are there in the state department?” That’s how those tactics work. If you fight back you’re moving the debate to their turf. If you stick to the issues they have no play. That I think is what Obama is trying to do in a very vague and somewhat maddeningly soft way.
Ron Paul was the ONLY candidate who openly spoke about restoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. THAT’S what I liked about him.
I’d sure like to hear more of that from Obama.
I’d like to see some of that in his cabinet choices as well.
In addition to the earlier explanations of why we are blessed with “Truthers” of all varieties and conspiracies is that some people don’t understand that much of life is random, that not all disasters are caused by malevolent people. Many people are susceptible to belief in conspiracies because they don’t understand the facts, the systems, the constructs that determine or affect or influence events. They slept in civics class.
or civics class no longer existed.
Well, that was tried against the Swift Boaters and we all know what happened. I think ignoring smears is a non-starter, because the MSM “reports” crap like it was truth and there are people who believe what Faux News “reports.”
Matt, thanks for writing this book. i’m still reading it and thoroughly enjoying it
You must have missed Chris Dodd’s visits to FDL and the fight he has made on FISA and against the telecoms.
we are hitting back at fox, hard and regularly. we have been doing a series of fox attacks, and specifically went after their lies around Obama.
Hi Scarecrow. By “we” do you mean the progressives, that side of the sixties movement? Hunter Thompson wrote a similar scene in Fear and Loathing when he talks about that moment when the wave rolled back. But I’m not so sure a) I feel any real connection to that “we” and b) that they lost. We have a much more racially tolerant country now and “we” certainly dominate academia… I think this is an interesting topic but mostly this seems like a different time and a different battle. Today’s thing is much more about a tiny corporate oligarchical class against a divided rest of us, than about a real culture war.
Hey Matt welcome:
I am deep into Naomi Klien’s Shock Doctrine. How do you see disaster capital engineered by the Bushco neocans here in the good ol USA.
!. The Housing Bubble
2. The Credit Crunch disater
3. The Commodoties Bubble
9/11 was followed by a fear campaign colors of danger. Disaters like Katrina were followed by venture capital. The Chicago Boys and the history of South America torture abd terror. Can we turn this around and are we in for more hard times with the recession?
welcome matt to the lake – i only know of you from your appearances on bill maher’s show and you never failed to inform and amuse us in many ways…. i thank you for that ;o)
You’re right. I didn’t miss Dodd’s fights. He was just gone so soon. I did miss him on FDL. But he was my top choice after the filibuster. He’s one I’d like to see in the Obama administration, dakine.
I know, thank heavens! It’s encouraging in the extreme to see push-back.
Hi Ron Levin. I think you have a point. I think also people have a need to believe that someone up there is in charge, pulling levers and controlling things. The alternative is to believe that there is widespread corruption and incompetence that demands that we take action and organize. Much easier (and more comforting) to sit on our asses and write screeds on the internet about structural engineering niceties we don’t really understand, while believing in a world run by an all-powerful league of villains.
So no mocking lime green jello ads?
Dammit!
Hello, big brother. I really wish I understood your question.
Coming from me this sounds strange
Matt, I am loving loving the book. My impression is so far that your cynicism is born of a strong sense of justice that cannot be satisfied by this deranged version of our society.
How did you end up in Russia? What got you started in journalism?
i kinda think i agree with what you said…. but can you smooth that out a bit more?
Matt, have you gotten any reactions to the book from the old congressional staffer friends and acquaintances you mention (anonymously) now that the book has come out?
Re countering Fox: I detect the beginning of a trend in the main press — the recognition that “balance” doesn’t mean that both sides of an issue needs to be represented if one side is the flat earthers. With hope, this may lead to more push back and reasoned response to the right wing nuts, maybe.
Yes, unfortunately, Alex Jones is in Austin.
Matt, tell me about “liberals”
One of articles, a year or so ago, set off a nice little debate here in the comments on FDL about “liberals.” A good portion of the commenter community seems to like to idea of rebulding the liberal brand.
I tend to dislike liberalism as much as conservatism and lump neo-liberalism with neo-conservatism.
I will argue that’s a big part of what the 60’s were about – foreseeing and trying to prevent what has come to pass in the form of the oligarchy.
Matt, my experience with the Patriot/militia set — who as you note now man the fort for the Ron Paul crowd (along with the Minutemen) and are prominent in the 9/11 Troof movement — was that their fundamental dualism was in many cases a product of their own personal failures. Scapegoating comes naturally for people who want to point a finger of blame for their own fucked-up lives.
Matt,
So what you are saying is that we are truly a third world country. If we view it like that then it doesn’t confuse so much. A group of small minded, incompetent jerks are doing exactly what will make them more rich and powerful. They are doing it in a stupid, unorganized way. The seams are unraveling quickly but not before they have taken the money and run.
Well, you’re a writer, not a politician. Your job is to be funny, not bring people together. So I think you can both just bust some heads in your own work and reasonably demand that our political leadership look towards civility.
Hello Mommybrain. I get that “cynical” thing all the time but I disagree that I’m a cynic. Ambrose Bierce said that a cynic is a “blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they should be.” But if you see them as they are AND how they should be, and you’re trying to be upset about the distance between the two, that’s not cynicism, that’s just being outraged like any normal person would be. The problem we have in our media is that too many journalists act like the stuff they cover is okay because people haev always acted like it’s okay. If Tom Brokaw isn’t screaming “WHAT THE FUCK!” when he reads the news, nobody else will. But they should, sometimes. That’s sort of where I see my role. I don’t think that’s a cynical approach. Tom Friedman, making gazillions of money saying nothing and blowing powerful people, that’s cynicism.
Re Paul followers (sorry I came in late)
I know several officers who are/were Paul supporters. If I remember correctly all supported Bush at least for the first term. They no longer will admit that they voted for him, even though we know they didn’t vote for Gore.
I have never asked if they were aware of the truly unsavory aspects of Paul’s belief system. I hope their support for the little gnome was simply on his libertarianism and not his racism and fascism. If so, we could have a major problem.
Cynic? Nah… You’re a voice crying in the wilderness. Keep it up. Please.
I see you’re a Capt.Obvious fan.LOL
Irrational outrage is the rational response to much these days.
If you haven’t done it yet, buy the book, it’s great:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/03855…..5G33258EP&
You’ll thank me in the morning.
Hi Peter,
Yes, I have heard from some of them. They mostly like the book I think. You have to understand that a lot of the people who work in Washington are as shocked as we are about how the place is run. They just can’t do much about it. One guy I know used to send me the emails other staffers would send out about the plum Wall Street jobs they got after serving on the Financial Services committee. They’re desperate for people like us to know about it, so even a limited effort in that direction like mine is appreciated I think.
If Tom Brokaw isn’t screaming “WHAT THE FUCK!” when he reads the news, nobody else will.
Well, the Brokaws could have been saying that about every day for the last seven years, but they didn’t — I can’t remember even it’s polite equivalent once from MSM. But when we say it, we’re shrill, extremist, foul-mouthed bloggers. Either the MSM is deranged, or we are, and there’s no referee.
I think there was a period when the mainstream media types tried a little bit of “WTF” responses—like in the 60s, when they denounced the police tactics during the ‘68 convention and the war—and got spanked so hard by the public they’re trying to serve that it made them timid. It’s complex, but we can’t completely discount the power that the flag-waving, war-loving set has over the media. Unlike everyone else, they write letters.
I believe the Neocons are against government services and have engineered crisis. It was painfully obvious to me the bulding industry made big profits building housing people couldn’t afford and so regulatory was removed and the finance industry was allowed to make all the bad loans. Nuetralizing regulatory by asigning industry heads to allow self police. CDOs that led to the Capital Crunch.
Bushco knew that spending the public treasury on the “War” will cash strap the inevitable new administration in a backlash to all the in your face conservative policies. Add major tax cuts to that.
Do you think it was planned as in orchestrated by A plan or they just bumbled along as they so wanted us to believe?
and they are well-financed………..
Long ago I was an intern in DC (pre-Monica, when that wasn’t a dirty word). Even as an intern, I could see two different kinds of DC folks — those who were shocked at how things were sometimes run, and the true believers who liked that just fine.
If any of your staffer friends want a little help in getting the word out about how things are run in DC, you might suggest they get in touch with Jane and Christy here at FDL.
I was watching the coverage of Tim Russert’s death yesterday, and Tweety and the rest of the usual suspects were wringing their hands wondering “who will do real reporting now?” I sat in front of the TV screaming “well, why the hell don’t you try it for once, you idiot?”
Great to have you here Matt … my 81 yr old mother has been buying Rolling Stone to follow your election coverage. Not sure if that is a good thing but it’s a bit odd when I get emails from her insisting I read you.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!
One of the other useful object lessons from the Patriot movement was that their conspiracy theories arose out of incidents in which the government failed to adequately address their concerns — namely, Ruby Ridge and Waco. Those failures bred people’s willingness to subscribe to these theories. And as Matt points out in Ch. 8, the Bush administration did everything it could to bury its massive failures in dealing with 9/11 and terrorism both before and after.
I think there’s a lot of confusion about what the word “liberal” means. I know among campaign journalists “liberalism” basically is a synonym for any criticism of America, weakness on defense issues, and pointy-headed intellectualism. If they see a politician quoting George Bernard Shaw (I saw this happen once), they call him a liberal because Shaw is a foreigner in a sweater and only a liberal would read such a person. I’m very much in favor of disposing of the word “liberal” as red-baiting political shorthand, the way TV political reporters of the “Crossfire” ilk use it.
On the other hand, reviving traditional liberalism, I think that’s going to be a hard sell using that particular word, for the above reason — but those values can be brought back and resold to the Republican demographic under a different package, I think. That time has probably come, with the sputtering out of the Republican/conservative brand.
Is this thing on?
No kidding. My guess is that it takes a lot less effort to push repeatedly-debunked 9/11 theories than it does to fight the real battles and enemies.
It’s one thing to blame 9/11 on Jews. It’s quite another to push for ending the war, putting taxes on the wealthy back to Eisenhower-era levels, undoing decades of vicious anti-labor legislation, and cutting the $20 billion given to the oil industry each year and using it to build wind farms and methane-digester power plants instead. The latter takes a tad more organization and effort.
I thought that the 9/11 Troof movement started out as aa legitimate call for transparency about the event but the message has shifted after becoming part of libertarian propaganda.
Matt:
Love your new book. How many people of Hagee’s church did you talk to? And did you ever try to talk to someone like Jane’s BFF(that’s Holy Joe Lieberman) about why guys like him support Hagee?
Matt, having seen a little more of the chaotic world than most of us Americans, what’s your read on the potential for peace in this country? Do you think people are panicking because we are close to collapse, or are we more secure in terms of the economy and the culture wars than we think we are?
Please forgive, a minor edit…
Well, I agree. There’s also the matter of the media being a totally different class of people than it was back in the sixties. Back then, and I remember this because my father was a reporter back then (and in the seventies when I was growing up), reporters were mainly middle-to-working class guys who came up through the ranks of journalism, learning it as a trade, not a profession. They were independent-minded and iconoclastic. Nowadays journalism is a place for Ivy Leaguers who tend to be extremely conservative not in a Rush Limbaugh way but in a David Brooks/yuppie dickhead/periwinkle-towel-buying sort of way. They’re the prototypical Bobos in Paradise. They may have “liberal” politics but they very much are invested in protecting the status quo from a class standpoint. So we get a very different kind of journalism as a result. Much less advocacy journalism, much less anger.
Matt I will rephrase the question;
Do you think it was planned to leave the next asministration with huge debt, a failed economy while they walked with the war profits, the housing profits and the finance profits?
We have discussed a lot of issues today, so to quote a very famous man:
“What is to be done?”
Or more properly, pseudo-libertarian propaganda: the Justin Raimondo/Alex Jones/Ron Paul set. They claim libertarianism but underneath the facade they’re basically Bircherites.
The MSM mourning for Russert doesn’t bother me. When the Greeks/Trojans had their war, they’d take a break every now and then and let the other side bury their dead. Then they’d have athletic games. They were more civilized then.
Someone once said that a libertarian is a conservative that smokes dope.
Wow, Nelson Algren. Love your books. Read “Never Come Morning” about six months ago. I talked to a lot of Hagee people — I was in the church for five months. As for why Lieberan likes him, that’s obvious. Both guys are heavy hitters with AIPAC, the Israeli lobby. What does BFF mean again?
Sounds sound to me! I’ll just add that neolib should be between wooden stake and neocon.
I’ve liked the progressive moniker. It hasn’t been reduced to a right-wing talking point like “liberal” has and being loosely defined, I think, allows people to project their needonto the term.
Couldn’t agree more. They use the war and the constitution to cover that agenda. I tell people that sy “Ron Paul” be careful what you ask for.
Sadly, no. The “Jews who worked in the WTC were told to stay home on 9/11″ muth got started within hours of the attacks:
Yeah.
I always thought that the 9/11 truthers did the Bushites a favor by providing a distraction from the appalling public record. Worse, anyone pointing out the uncontroversial aspects of how the administration handled 9/11 before during & after always has to preface what they say with “I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but…” Which weakens what should be the devastating case that is, again, the pubic record.
The 9/11 Report, imperfect as it is, should by itself be a sound basis for impeachment, especially coupled with the ginning up of the Iraq war through the spreading of total bullshit. But try getting the corporate press to admit it…
I hate to be the one to ask the obvious question, but since we have the author of the infamous “Pope” articles as the guest today, I feel compelled to do so.
Tim Russert: Great journalist, or greatest journalist ever?
(and, btw, I do offer my condolences to his family and friends)
Which famous man are you quoting? Lenin or Cherneshyevsky? I jump at any chance to talk about Cherneshyevsky. Has anyone here read that novel? The unfunniest book of all time. Love to erad it for that reason.
Once upon a time lots of newspapers used to have a labor beat.
Now, not so much…
heh, good one!
Oh well.
Have to chime in: I’ve been looking forward to reading this one– sounds quite fascinating & I’ll have to bump it up on the ol reading list.
Now to go back & read through above comments….
Can’t use “progressive.”
It has been proven conclusively that progressivism is exactly the same thing as fascism.
Or so I’m told by some clever fellow over at NRO.
Russert joins a long list of Buffalo natives who never went back to Buffalo after they could afford to leave. He should be buried next to Vincent Gallo and Ron Jaworski.
Heh. Amazing how that works.
You must have to refrain from projectile vomiting each time some media darling who pulls in seven figures a year takes people like you to task for being “elitist”.
guess there are concurrent threads.
Lenin, I never heard of the other guy with the long name. This isn’t the place to put together a progressive agenda to deal with the country’s many plights, but we covered so many of them today that in a moment of frustration I felt the need to yell:”LETS CITE SOME SOLUTIONS!” but this isnt the place.
Matt — so great to have you here discussing the book today. Thank your publicist for the barf bag for me. *g*
I have to say, the kickoff to Chapter 11 — the idea for the “Man of God” versus the “Man of the World” ad mock-up was freaking hilarious. Although given the hapless testimony of such mental luminaries as the lovely folks installed at the DOJ and elsewhere throughout the government, I’m not certain their mental image of who they are in that ad is accurate. But then again…look what they were able to get away with for so long.
How do you see the next Administration dealing with so many career hires in that mode?
Ok, Big Brother, here goes. I think as a general strategy the Republicans have indeed in recent decades tended to borrow like mad to puff up the economy while they are in office, leaving the mess for the Democrats to clean up. It happened with Reagan and it’s happening now. It’s sound politics if your voters are totally stupid and can’t tell the difference between having money and having a line of credit. And we’re there, sure.
Hey Matt,
I haven’t read the book yet but certainly plan to. I am big fan of your Rolling Stone pieces.
One of my favorite history/social commentary books is Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style In American Politics.” I often go back and look it over as almost a prediction of where things are today, from a 1960s perspective.
Your book seems to pick up where Hofstadter left off, when he talked about those who needed to see conspiracies on the far left and far right in our political history to make sense of social forces that seemed overwhelming to them (he specifically mentioned former Communists turned Righties–aka Necons–and apocalyptic preachers).
So after all that crap I just wrote, as I always take longer than Andy Rooney to get to my point–my bad–did you read Hofstadter’s work and/or see yourself continuing where he left off in writing this book? Did his work influence you?
Once again, enjoy your work. Cheers pal.
Wait, both of those gents are still alive! Besides, Ron Jaworski actually made something of his life.
D’oh, I should have know soros was behind it!
I was at a meeting of government types a couple of weeks ago. The topic was flood control measures in the Central Valley of California.
One of the engineers spoke of using a liberal application of a certain guideline regarding a certain process. Almost immediately after the word came out of his mouth, his face turned red and he started explaining what he meant by “liberal” — as if he’d just used a dirty word.
It’s a deliberate plan on Grover Norquist’s part: Run up the debt to sky-high levels and eliminate as an option restoring taxes on the rich to 1950s levels, thus forcing cuts in social programs or anything that doesn’t provide the big margins for campaign contributor industries that, say defense spending does. Aka “Starving the beast” or “drowning the government in the bathtub”.
FYI Lenin stole the title of his famous book from a famous bad novel written in the 1860s.
As for solutions, I’m sort of like Paul Goodman in that I don’t think America needs massive sweeping changes to be fine. Just a little tinkering here and there. After living in a place like Russia for ten years you learn to appreciate the value of a functioning infrastructure, which we have in spades. A little less stealing, a little less corruption, a little more saving and a little less borrowing and we’d be fine. The problem is that we’re so motivated to make bad decisions because the whole direction of our culture is geared toward spending, making war, and money-grabbing.
But if you want to ask me what concretely I would propose, real campaign finance reform would be high on the list. Freeing lawmakers to actually make decisions not based on rewarding their campaign contributors would help a lot.
Vincent Gallo is from Buffalo?
No wonder the wines are so sophisticated and complex.
When you say “functioning infrastructure” I assume you mean political infrastructure, which we do have. Bridges, roads and tunnels, not so much any more…
Hi Cliff. Congrats on your torture of McCain. No, I didn’t read Hofstadter’s book, but it sounds like I should. It might have made my thesis more coherent. Certainly I agree that these theories have the benefit of presenting a very simple picture of world politics to people who don’t have the time or the energy to digest subtleties.
Buffalo 66.
Matt,
First, Welcome to the Lake!
I have to object to the idea of allowing Republicans to dictate what a word (such as “liberal”) means. Democrats just haven’t provided any push-back.
When Republicans start tarring a cherished progressive/liberal icon, why do we act like the proverbial 97-pound weakling that was the staple of comic book ads when I was growing up? We need more leaders who will take on this kind of advocacy, exposing the shallowness and pettiness of those critics.
Bob in HI
Compared to other places? I don’t know. America is still pretty impressive to me, even in that respect. It may not be Switzerland, but…
Yes. And does anyone have a better definition than “conspiracy” for how the neo-con cabal has operated? They didn’t — though the tried — get their way with social security; they didn’t — though they haven’t stopped trying yet — get control of the last big bundle of public money; i.e., SCHOOL funding. They did manage to shove through the Medicare drug debacle, which will force multi-changes in the program earlier rather than later. I’m less interested in making fun of certain conspiracy theoriest (’Troothers’) than in pointing our the true conspirators who manipulate elections, etc. Norquist got way farther perhaps than even he could have imagined.
I certainly agree that progressives have to figure out a way to solve the “toughness” problem. To date the strategy of Democratic leaders for seeming tough is to bail out and sell out their constituents at the first hint of an accusation that that they lack toughness — see HRC and Kerry and others with regard to the war, etc. They don’t seem to understand that standing their ground and standing up for actual principles is where you get your toughness rep. Or maybe they do and their reasons for selling out are more sinister. Either way I think we need to replace the DLC wing of the Dems with real people with real backbones.
Well, we’ve had bridges closed here due to lack of repair, there was the bridge that collapsed, the Boston “Big Dig” that went awry, and generally a lack of needed maintenance over the last few decades. We still have the bridges and tunnels and roads, but without maintenance (which takes TAXES, fer gawd’s sake) we may not have them for all that much longer.
Love your stuff, bro’. You make me laugh all while making serious points.
I’d like to also propose “no more stupid wars.”
Matt -
Tell the folks at Rolling Stone that you are the sole reason I bought a two-year subscription. Your satire and wit are unparalleled. I just recently finished The Great Derangement – it made me bust out laughing many times on the quiet, morning Metro ride.
If you ever feel like reading some other madness, you might enjoy my mockeries: http://insideoutthebeltway.blo…..e-for.html
nailed it!! ’nuff said…….
Well said.
Thanks for visiting today. Just ordered the book.
We had one bridge collapse. The Big Dig got finished eventually and my home town of Boston looks much better. I’m not saying we don’t have problems, or that we’re not flagging in this area, but at least we don’t have generals stealing missiles in the middle of the night and selling them to foreign powers for .20 cents on the dollar, like Russia does. Obviously with our mangled elections lately and Katrina and the blackout and other dents in our rep for competence things don’t look as great as they used to, but this is a massive and very rich country and keeping it running even at the level we have is an awesome task that we should all be pleased we’re handling even to this degree. I’m just saying it’s not all bad and fixing things isn’t that extreme or daunting a task.
oh, and about the cell phone from the airplane thing — are calls not supposed to work? I’m going to admit something embarrassing here.
I made a call from a flight about a week ago, and it went through. When I hung up, the passengers on both sides of me let me know you’re not supposed to use your cell phone in an airplane. I thought it was just during take-off and landing! So I’m an idiot.
Anyway, my call worked.
Where can I get a promo barf bag?
Hi Matt, this is a really fun read.
My question’s about the narrator. Is the “I” who narrates this book actually you? Or did you develop a narrative persona to write this book? There are several narrator-personas, depending upon which Derangement you’re immersed in, but I wonder about the person who speaks to the reader: is it really Matt?
Thanks for considering a sorta literary question, but I was fascinated by the narrator’s perspective throughout this book. It is terrific; thanks for writing it (and for returning in one piece!) and thanks for stopping by FDL today.
Thanks for the healthy dose of optimism. I feel better already.
I’d pay for one.
I guess I’m just wishing that we would redirect our priorities away from illegal wars and occupations back to more rational concerns. I know that we can do it… Si, se puede!
Yeah, well, there’s that, too. It always blows me away that no one is talking about the cost of this war. Like we can actually afford it. Imagine how much better off we would be if we didn’t make decisions like that? Not many countries have the luxury of being this stupid for this long. And we won’t either for too much longer, I guess.
Hi Teddy. Thanks for the question. That’s me throughout the book, yes. None of it is altered for literary reasons, it’s just what happened. The instant I start trying to fictionalize anything the whole thing falls apart, so I avoid that.
Have you come to “Be mocked relentlessly” as popular wisdom has it? I have learned I am doing my part to keep my hometown weird, which pleased greatly. Always glad to perform a public service. It was an added bonus to be disrespected by such a band of luminaries. Even purported men of god have agreed that such mockery is an example of appropriate conduct. I really enjoyed seeing the other side of a lot folks here.
Any disagreement with the official version of events immediately places one into the camp of the loony of theorists. There is no room between rational questioning raised by incongruities in the evidence and foolish speculation. Amazing, I was pretty damn surprised to learn I was a troll of the Rightwing militia sort.
Matt -
Sorry if you may already have been asked this question. Are you writing or planning to write another book?
Thanks for the response Matt.
I have enjoyed making Mr. McCain at least answer a few questions about why he’s such a dimestore Duvalier.
In any case, I look forward to reading your book. Loved Spanking The Donkey.
And if you have the time to read Hofstadter, check out the Paranoid Style, it sounds like you’ve done a great job of updating what he did (with jokes!).
Hi DC. Yes, I just agreed to do another one with the same publisher, but it won’t be out for about two years.
Ok, Jane, Marion, everybody, thanks very much for your time and thanks for logging on. It was a lot of fun and Jane, we should meet again sometime. At the moment the girlfriend is staring at me wondering when I’m coming to dinner, so…
Anyway thanks again and take care all –
Good question DCLaw1. Hope he answers it.
Thanks for being here. Rock on!
Matt-
In your opinion, which would be more likely to hasten the Apocalypse?
Preznit McCain-VP Lieberman or a McCain-Huckabee administration?
There was a joint econ. committee hearing last week on the costs of the war going forward — but it got next to no publicity in the wake of the Boumadiene decision from SCOTUS. It’s as though there is a news black hole on a lot of the more solid discussion issues on costs — past and future both — with Iraq.
Given the infrastructure problems, crumbling schools, and state budget issues, I don’t see how it can get ignored much longer, either.
oh BRAVO!!!@ WELL said, (like that’s unusual for Taibbi)!!!
Matt, are you supportive of Blue America? Do you like what they are doing? The candidates they are promoting?
Thanks for coming by, Matt — and for such an hilarious read. Great snark.
Matt, thank you for spending the afternoon with us at Firedoglake.
i’m getting so famous for asking a question in book salon 2 seconds after the guests leave.
sheeeeesh.
Yup fun, thanks Bev, Matt and all!
Ian Welsh is upstairs!
The Art of Measurement
How are things coming along between you the marker and the printout of the ruling?
Well, congratulations, then — it’s amazing that you survived. The glimpses of Matt in the boarding house in Texas were really scary.
Dear Matt Taibbi
Who goes to bed and who is there in the morning? I don’t think I abused you. I wrote one letter to your blog after reading your book (how crazy is it for an author to publish an email address?) thinking your research would provide answers to my questions. Then I wrote this one post here on FDL. (Fancy us meeting again. I didn’t think you’d find my efforts so distasteful. I merely sought answers to questions that troubled me) I find your suggestion that a comparatively large number of cell phone calls got through when apparently they should or could not have on a par with your suggestion that about a hundred people went along with the deception for unknown reasons.
Who is Barbara Olsen?
Thanks for being here today Matt. Would love to.
oh man
The wife of Ted Olsen, the then Solicitor General of the United States.
Kinda blows, doesn’t it?
Who made a call on a cell phone to her husband from the plane before she died.
oh man
She was a commentator frequently appearing on Faux News who was on American 77. She was also the wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson who allegedly called him a couple of times with reports of the hijacking. You can find many variations of the story of course on the net if you search her name.
Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11
we done?
Tried hard to digg this fabulous book salon post and thread and encountered only “fatal errors” and hope & trust a more patient and adept firepup will succeed. :~(
What a great tonic after the endless Friday the 13th downer. Bravo Jane, Matt, Christy and all you fabulous commmenting firedogs!
Well, I just clicked the Digg and it worked just fine for me.
Thanks NPB!
Thanks newtonusr – I feel much better. My sassy comment got lost but am pleased my recommend worked out. Am so fired up to read Matt’s book I can’t wait for a library copy and just found a copy Borders is holding for my pickup. woo hoo!
Great salon Jane, thanks!
Too much Java at Digg – throws our browsers into fits.
Oh dear, that doesn’t sound good – as if I had any idea of the complexities of Java. If there are alternatives to digg you know of for getting the recommend thingy working please advise this ole tech-challegned brat.
yerba mate?
I regret being unable to follow this thread and respond to Mr. Taibbi before he left. I have no idea why he dissed me. I assumed, incorrectly it turns out, that he did his research and had real answers for 9/11. Instead he implies I annoy him daily when my contact with him consited on one email he did not answer and my comment on this thread. He was misleading about me to the point of dishonesty. Taibbi says Scott McLellan flipped for the money. Taibbi’s book is a commercial enterprise that adds nothing to the debate.
His book deals with two “derangements”, Christian Evangelism and the Truthers of 9/11. As for Christian Evangelism it is no different from Orthodox Judiasm or other religions. God is a matter of faith, not fact and will always be so. Some religions get dangerous when they derive their strength from converting heathens, like it or not.
Truthers are another matter. Their concerns may be checked against external facts, but Mr. Taibbi apparently did not do so. This is not to say many Truther arguments are not both absurd and unnecessary. “Loose Change” the Truther documentary by two twenty somethings (Google “Loose Change” for the link) contains things to ponder and things which make no sense.
I think my differences with Mr. Taibbi are products of our age difference. He was born in 1970 which means he missed Kennedy’s assassination. I was thirty five then, three years younger than Taibbi is today. I became what was then called an assassination buff, reading just about everything I could on the subject. I concluded, like more than fifty percent of Americans that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy; that Oswald was not the lone killer and in fact probably had nothing to do with the killing.
The Warren Commission’s counsel was a guy named Arlen Spector, now Repub Senator from PA, who created a single bullet theory, that one bullet wounded John Connelly, who sat next to Kennedy and then killed or wounded Kennedy. He needed the single bullet theory because a guy named Zapruder filmed the entire assassination with his 8mm movie camera which provided strict time limits for everything. Connelly insisted to the day he died that Kennedy was hit first. He felt Kennedy thrown back and then an instant later he was hit. At the time I served on our Town’s Board of Finance with a Republican lady whose husband was a ballistics expert for Remington Arms. According to her, her husband said the single bullet, recovered in almost pristine condition in Parkland Hospital, could not have been the bullet that wounded Kennedy and Connelly because any lead bullet would have been seriously deformed passing through flesh and hitting bone. Then there was Jack Ruby, a low level gangster, who killed Oswald supposedly because he wanted to spare the widow Kennedy the trauma of testifying at a trial. Ruby loan sharked and ran women from his cheezy night club. His career choice stretches his alleged empathy to the breaking point. I am, therefore, more inclined to see conspiracy in high places then those who did not experience Kennedy’s killing. I think our country’s decline began with that assassination. Bye-bye Miss America Pie.
Anyhow on the matter of cell phones on airplanes, Nonplussed at #184 provides a link to an apparently scholarly article on why Barbara Olsen most likely did not contact her husband by cell phone. It has lots of footnotes and seems authoritative, but I have no idea if it is correct. The article says technology permitting use of cell phones at high altitudes did not come in until 2004. It was these sort of questions I thought Mr. Taibbi could answer. Apparently he knows no more about it than I do.
One more point about feeding trolls. It seems a “troll” is someone who opposed the conventional wisdom as expressed in the comments on this blog. It is not a good position for a liberal blog to take.