The Right in all its Hypocritical and Intellectually Masturbating glory

I thought this was sort of a fun coincidence.  Over at the "RNC accredited" Power Line blog, one of the main posters, Deacon, is off for the day, observing the Jewish holiday.  So he kindly decided to leave us with this posting called "The Horror".  This was originally posted on May 26th, 2004 on the subject of a mildly hyperbolic speech by Al Gore on the Abu Ghraib crisis.  But Deacon thought he should bring it back today because "the essence applies to an all-too-large chunk of [Gore's] party" these days.

To whit:

One of the great differences between liberals and conservatives is how the two camps go about explaining misconduct. Conservatives prefer straightforward, old-fashioned explanations that focus on a flaw in those who commit the misconduct -- greed, lust, cruelty, or (in extreme cases) evil itself. For liberals, such explanations are unsatisfyingly superficial. Misconduct must have a root cause, but liberals consider basic human instincts such as greed, lust, and cruelty to be insufficiently rooted. Thus, an intellectual posse must be recruited to track down the real culprit. And the search always seems to lead to the liberals' version of the heart of darkness -- "Amerika," in other words the policies adopted by America's elected leaders. By rejecting the obvious explanation and shifting the blame to American policy, the liberal accompishes that which is most important to him -- he proves his intellectual and moral superiority.

Gosh darn those arrogant liberals wallowing in the psychological mud -- maybe Krauthammer really does have it right.  What a funny coincidence then, that on the same day Deacon was recycling his brilliant old post, the inmutable Victor Davis Hanson published this fascinating article in the National Review about--among many, many other things--how "Rathergate" has become the culmination of "The Fall" of "a bankrupt generation" -- presumably the 60s counterculture but also, apparently, the UN, university campuses in general, the Nobel Peace Prize committee and all the major news networks.  A few choice grafs:

Commentators have envisioned Rather's fall as symbolic of a "paradigm shift" and the "end of the era" -- an event that has crystallized the much larger and ongoing demise of the old establishment media. Allegories from the French Revolution and the emperor without any clothes to the curtain scene in The Wizard of Oz have been evoked to illustrate Rather's dilemma and the hypocrisy of all that went before. We have come a long way since the 1960s: The once-revolutionary pigs taking over the manor are now bloated and strutting on two legs as they feast on silver inside the farmhouse.

...

Ever so incrementally along this inevitable road to Rathergate, John Kerry's searing Cambodia-patrol story, and Kitty Kelley's Reagan and Bush pseudographies, many Americans began to worry about the ends-justifying-the-means culture of the sanctimonious Left. The counterculture was defended on the dubious premise that the activists needed to fight fire with fire as they exposed everything from Nixon's lies to the embarrassing Pentagon Papers.

But in the process there also began a professional devolution, as questionable legal and ethical methods were excused in the name of the greater good. We got the Ellsberg pilfered documents, the blank check of "unnamed sources," trips to Hanoi and Paris to meet the enemy, Peter Arnett broadcasting gloom and doom live from Baghdad -- all culminating in the two-bit forgeries used for the "higher" cause of unseating George Bush. Daniel Ellsberg, Jane Fonda, and CBS may have done things that were legally wrong (like the latter's promulgating fraudulent government documents to defame a government official), but in postmodern logic they were morally "right" given their superior knowledge, character, and progressive intentions.

...

In the meantime, as this unclean tale slowly reaches it end -- and it will -- CBS soon may have to decide between having Dan Rather and having an audience. Dan Rather, in his abject non-professionalism and in his overweening arrogance, has become the symbol of all that has gone so terribly wrong with our once-romantic but now confused, compromised, and aging generation of change. Such are the wages for those who destroy timeless rules and proven protocols for short-term expediency and thus find no sanctuary in their own hour of need.

I'm not sure what my favourite part of the article is: Hanson decrying "liberal elites" while comparing "Rathergate" to choice scenes from the French Revolution; his seemless cultural-history progression from the Ellsberg Pentagon Papers to the scandal of network reporters not sounding the jingoistic line in Baghdad (skipping thirty years of recent history in the process); his ability to tie Jimmy Carter's Peace Prize, the "deterioration" of the UN under Annan (as if Boutros-Gali was some sort of saint in comparison) and soaring tuition at colleges into the alleged coming Fall of Elite Liberalism as manifested at CBS (6 weeks before the Dems likely pick up two seats in the Senate and retake the White House); or his apparent belief--shared by an alarming number of right-wing bloggers--that the relative non-issue of Dan Rather not adequately checking his facts before running with an anti-Bush story for which he's been thoroughly fisked is somehow comparable to Watergate or to the cultural battle over the Vietnam War in which 58 million US soldiers were killed.  Somehow, I just don't think Al Gore could even begin to compete with this.  More to the point, I don't think he'd ever try.

In fact, in light of Hanson's latest, I'm going to offer this amendment to Deacon's analysis:

One of the great differences between liberals and conservatives is how the two camps go about explaining misconduct. In general, liberals prefer straightforward, old-fashioned explanations that focus on a flaw in the policies and individuals those whose decisions lead to the misconduct -- greed, myopia, unregulated self-interest, disregard for the public good, or (in extreme cases) evil itself. For conservatives, such explanations are insufficiently convoluted. Liberal philosophy, and in some cases, outrage over specific atrocities, must have a root cause.  But conservatives consider basic human instincts such as community, social responsibility and the public interest to be insufficiently credible, let alone in their own interests. Thus, an intellectual posse must be recruited to track down the real driving force behind the liberal outrage over stuff like Abu Ghraib or massive budget-busting supply-side tax cuts -- which always turns out to be some vague, quack-psych-soc notion of elite dysfuntion. And the search always seems to lead to the conservatives' version of the heart of darkness -- taxation! or other such welfare-state or market-regulating policy ideas. By rejecting the obvious explanation and shifting the blame to some fevered notion of liberal mania based on a selective and often downright bogus reading of history and comtemporary culture, the conservative accompishes that which is most important to him -- he hides his actual anti-community goals behind a lot of rube-fooling gibberish about liberal elitism, thus advancing the goal of a totally unregulated, wealth-concentrated, small-government and basically illiberal society.

I can't wait until Kerry wins and Hanson's head explodes.

•  Good observations ...

  ...tlaura, and a lot to discuss.

  I, too, was struck by the conflation of the Ellsberg documents with the Rather documents, as if these two were equivalents in what they said and how they were acquired. Quite revealing of the right-wing agenda, if you ask me.

  As we learned a year ago May, just because somebody says "Mission Accomplished" doesn't mean it is, and this rightist cry of victory in the Kulturkampf is as hollow as the aircraft carrier speech. Does he really think women will return to their old Stepford lives, gays will retreat into the closet or into hetero-conversion clinics, that we'll reinstate anti-miscegenation and anti-blasphemy laws, that rubbers will no longer be available in Connecticut?

  On the purely political front, the Republicans are indeed sitting pretty, in control of all three federal branches, including the lower federal courts, and a hefty proportion of governorships and state legislatures. If they maintain this control, we'll get more of what you so exquisitely lay out in your final paragraph.

  But the premature cry that the culture war is over and that "our side" has been flattened, with only the mop-up remaining, is so patently ludicrous that it can only spring from fear that, for all their recent successes, and control of the political and media machinery, the right's power ultimately rests on sand.  

   

  by Meteor Blades on Sat Sep 25, 2004 at 12:26:54 PM PDT

  •  Don't lose sight

    of the essential hilarity of the whole thing though -- I've gotten to the point where a good Krauthammer column can crack me up, and I spent a good 10 minutes laughing my ass off at the Hanson article.  Hanson isn't always this funny -- like when he's urging the US to "kill the insurgents" in Iraq, but this "A Decadent Generation Dies!" article is a real hoot.  I just love how conservatives are always challenging the mental faculties of various liberals on one hand and then on the other spewing this kind of totally illogical, hyperbolic tripe.  Sometimes, you just have to laugh...

    I also sometimes think that if the left laughed a little louder at this sort of ludicrousness, if we treated it with the pure condescension it deserved, we'd get further.  Liberals are so damn earnest.  I'm one of the worst that way.  But we're doing Hanson a much bigger service than he deserves taking him seriously.

    by tlaura on Sat Sep 25, 2004 at 12:38:59 PM PDT

    •  Pundits

      Conservatives and their pundits claim to be - demand to be seen as - governed by reason.  They decry the left as irrational and given to emotional thinking, which they like to patronize as 'valuable in certain instances' but outside the realm of adult discourse and responsible political discourse.  Conservatives are willing to make the 'tough' decisions about people's lives while liberals are weak-kneed, emotive, weepy, and wrong.

      They say this.  Then they publish lunatic articles roping together some of the most far-flung instances of 'liberal abuses' that may or may not be abuses and in instances may simply be mistakes, while utterly disregarding a very long and growing roster of conservative policies of destruction.  They couple this with screeds of highly emotive, illogical reasoning why liberals are hell-bent on the destruction of America or something.  The pitch into the hysteric happens within seconds.  Their policies make no sense and often are founded on incorrect precepts.

      They are lunatic.  But they publish.

      by lennywick on Sat Sep 25, 2004 at 12:51:46 PM PDT

    •  Hanson really bugs me

      It's a personal thing with me. I have an undergraduate degree in Classical Languages from U. C. Berkeley. Hanson is a classics professor at Fresno State. I'll admit that some of my professors weren't all there, but I cannot understand how somebody who has studied the Greeks and the Romans as much as he supposedly has can come up with so many bullshit interpretations of those ancient cultures----and then strictly apply those interpretations to the present day.

      But that article that you just posted the link is such unbelievable drivel. Obviously the man has learned nothing about classical rhetoric either. What a dweeb.

      by mimi9 on Sat Sep 25, 2004 at 12:59:11 PM PDT