Late Nite FDL: The Incredible Shrinking Right
Posted in: 2008 Election, Media, Random Wingnuttery
(Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman)
Glenn Greenwald is giving me goosebumps.
The national media — the World Ruled by Drudge, led around by and working in conjunction with the rest of the right-wing noise machine — have tried mightily for months to depict Nancy Pelosi as weak and her leadership in chaos, and they try to do roughly the same with Harry Reid. Yet that has all been brushed aside, as the Democratic caucus in both the Senate and the House have been shockingly unified, not just once but continuously, in their defiance of both the Leader's will and the worthless Hiatt/Broder/Fox News "warnings" about "going too far" in opposing the war and the Leader.
The elected officials comprising the Democratic caucus are very politically diverse, characterized by widely disparate ideologies, varying amounts of political courage, and completely different calculations of self-interest. Yet virtually without exception, they have remained unified in their opposition to the war and the President even in the face of the Washington Establishment's painfully trite warnings that they must capitulate for their own good. That, standing alone, is a fundamental change, a sign that something has shifted profoundly.
Yes, sir, Mr. G. I do believe you are right. The Right Wing Noise Machine did its damnedest to smear, slander, belittle, and badger The Speaker about her bipartisan trip to Syria, didn't they? They published as many photos as they could find of her wearing a hijab, they accused her of treason, they called her incompetent, they accused her of meddling. They all but Photoshopped her into a suicide belt and accused her of engineering 9/11 herself, and what happened?
Now they're trying to do the same to Harry Reid through GOP mouthpieces like "Dean" David Broder, but not only is the public proving to be seriously uninterested, but this little bit of BushCo ass-licking may have cost Broder his reputation forever. His ham-handed attempt to conflate the Majority Leader with Alberto Gonzales, accusing Reid of "bumbling" and "ineptitude" may have flown just fine in 2005, but Bush administration propaganda just isn't as potent as it used to be in swaying public opinion. See this brutal Media Matters rundown of Broder's arc from Beltway Godhead to Bleating Dickhead in just a few short, easy steps.
Think about where the Democrats were when Harry Reid became their leader in the Senate. Think about where they are now. Think about David Broder's recent prediction of a Bush comeback; his touting of Bush's response to Katrina; his praise for Cheney and Rumsfeld; his claims that journalists should apologize to Karl Rove for saying he did something he did; his call for fewer details and less discussion of policy from candidates; his defense of Richard Nixon; his prediction that if Joe Lieberman lost his primary, Democrats would perform poorly in the general election; his double standards in his coverage of candidates personal lives; his suggestion that Bill Clinton should have resigned because he "may well have lied" about sex; his unwillingness to say that a "lawless" president who "repeatedly defied the Constitution" should step down; his elitist and arrogant statement that he and his pals care more about being lied to than you do; his hypocritical statement that Kerry's and Gore's "arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself."
Think about all that, and ask yourself: If you were David Broder, wouldn't you — just maybe — think twice before accusing someone else of "bumbling" and "ineptitude"?
But back to the formidable Mr. Greenwald:
And then there are the not-yet-fully-appreciated revelations in George Tenet's new (and unconscionably and unforgivably belated) book, one highly illustrative example of which was recounted today by Scott Shane in The New York Times:
In January 2002, George J. Tenet, the man who oversaw all American spy agencies, was asked by a visiting Italian intelligence official what he knew about United States officials making contact with exiled Iranian opposition figures.
"I shot a look at other members of my staff in the meeting," Mr. Tenet writes in his newly published memoir. "It was clear that none of us knew what he was talking about. The Italian quickly changed the subject."
The embarrassed Mr. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, had stumbled upon a quixotic effort by a few Pentagon officials working closely with a conservative Middle East specialist, Michael A. Ledeen, to meet with Iranian dissidents living abroad. It was neither the first nor the last time he would be surprised by intelligence efforts inside the Bush administration but outside official channels. . . .
That's just great, isn't it? The very Bush cabal dead-enders who brought us the irredeemably cocked-up war in Iraq have been doing covert, extra-governmental spy work. Doesn't that make you feel safe and happy? Well, according to Greenwald, the fact that we know it is enough to signal a change in Washington's unthinking obesiance to the NeoCons.
It was prohibited for awhile to describe the work of the deceitful little neoconservative cabal in Washington which was at the center of the administration's efforts to knowingly churn out pure falsehoods in order to justify the invasion of Iraq — an invasion which (Tenet is but the latest figure to reveal) was desired and planned by Dick Cheney and friends long before the 9/11 attacks.
But the truth can only be concealed for so long, and sooner or later, it is going to be absolutely clear just how corrupt and radical the dominant political force governing the Bush administration really has been. In the world of crazed neoconservative radicals, Michael Ledeen is the Gold Standard for pure reality-detachment and a belief in deceiving the American public in order to manipulate their support for the neoconservative agenda, and yet there he was — Michael Ledeen — at the center of the cabal which was shaping foreign policy and the Iraq war, operating in secret even from our CIA Director.
Hee. The "Gold Standard for pure reality-detachment". Nice one.
Taken together, these two seemingly unconnected incidents reveal: (a) just how radical, extremist and dishonest are the people who have been running this country for the last six years, the whole Bush-led neoconservative Republican edifice loyally supported by most of the "conservative" movement, and (b) outside of the hard-core Bush followers and the stuck-in-2002 Beltway media establishment, there is a rapidly growing recognition of (a) in this country, which is beginning to engender a very potent sea change in political opinion and political power.
And most critically of all, the joint forces of the Beltway media and the right-wing machine have been almost completely impotent in trying to stem the tide. No matter what they do, public anger with the president, his party and the war just continues to grow.
Well, it's about friggin' time, isn't it?
But, yes, as sure as there are signs of spring bursting out all over, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the Right Wing Messaging Machine is working harder and harder to accomplish less and less. The public just isn't buying it anymore, and all the voices that we are so used to hearing decry us, scold us, and ominously warn us again and again that we're Going Too Far are getting smaller and shriller and less effective with every lie they tell.
Finally, one of Glenn's commenters says what I think all of us have been yearning to hear:
Stewart on Moyers' JournalI'm watching Moyers' Journal, and Jon Stewart is the guest, with Josh Marshall from TPM to follow. It's caused me to reflect on the fairly recent past, and I am getting an almost cellular sense that something very profound is beginning to bud.
I have to say that a remarkably intimate, yet expansive, community of thought seems to be forming across television, film, and the Internet. There's a rather quiet, yet intense, movement of thought and expression building. It focuses not so much on any particular ideology ("right" or "left"), but on a common, critical-mass thirst to dispel the deception, irrationality, and utter hubris that has been corroding our proud country for what seems like an eternity.
An undeniable intellectual and social confluence is rapidly gaining momentum and solidarity. This solidarity is amazingly organic, not hierarchical — its only guide is the sixth sense of skepticism, outrage, and, yes, reason. It transcends party. It is oceanic, atmospheric. An intellectual, moral, societal, and psychological gestalt as ancient as humanity itself, kept underfoot by a long winter, but indelibly germinating once again with the thaw.
It is literally everywhere now. The voices of blindness and rage cannot shake me anymore. I haven't felt such hope in a very long time.
We are making a difference. Never forget that. Even as there are setbacks and frustrations along the way, we are winning. The Right wants to portray all of us here in Left Blogistan as a deranged splinter group, but the fact of the matter is (and what Democrats seem to finally be realizing) is that we are the Early Adopters. The tide has turned. We have reached the tipping point. This will not be a brief hiccup of liberal ascendence before the "grown-ups" in government come to shut us down and usher the Republicans back into power.
This is the (long overdue) death of Reagan Conservatism. These are the Last Throes of the kind of blinkered, moronic, willfully ignorant, hateful, corrupt, violent, greedy politicking that the GOP has come to embody in recent decades. The world has seen what happens when men like Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, and Newt Gingrich are handed the reigns to the commonwealth. Everything turns to shit.
We should thank the Republicans, though. They have established an unbroken, undeniable resume of failure that we will be able to point to for decades to come as evidence that anything as important as our national well-being should never in a million years be entrusted to a bunch of spoiled, hubristic man-children like the GOP. Their era is ending, and that alone is enough to give me hope for this world.
Related posts:
Social Web