It is hard to be surprised anymore by the rhetoric of the right-wing. I've come to expect a blind repetition of the latest GOP talking points - culture of life, freedom on the march, yadda yadda yadda.
The latest catchphrase to hit the conservative commentaries comes from none other than Dick "F*&k you" Cheney; apparently, the insurgency is in its `death throes'. Lucky for us, Kos already put that absurdity to rest.
Unfortunately, the rest of the GOP fantasy machine didn't get the message.
Victor Davis Hanson, in the Washington Times, wraps up an altogether Orwellian column (more on that later) by applying Cheney's fantasy to, well, a meme to encompass all global events:
Still, the racket and clamor from all these antidemocratic ideas in 2005 are not birth pangs, but the bitter death throes of those whose time has nearly passed.
The issue isn't really the (mis)use of one minor phrase; it is a symptom the up-is-down, black-is-white, back-asswards propaganda put forth by this administration and its supporters.
(more below the fold)
Hanson's theory of everything works something like this: Western (American) liberalism is the only viable option for the future, and societies that don't buy into that model are surely desperate and near collapse. As `evidence,' Hanson runs through a litany of current events--from the French and Dutch rejections of the EU constitution, to China's economic growth and the `morally bankrupt' Islamic fundamentalists--to `prove' his point.
The problems in his reasoning, and even basic facts, are too numerous to refute one-by-one. I'll stick to the most salient examples and then try to draw out some general conclusions.
The French and Dutch rebuffs of the European Union constitution will soon be followed by other rejections... The EU constitution - and its promise of a new Europe -- supposedly offered a corrective to the Anglo-American strain of Western civilization.
The reasons for the French rejection of the constitution were many and varied, and certainly beyond my current realm of discussion. It is clear, however, that if anything, the constitution was viewed as TOO Anglo-American, not a defense against it. Many in France felt voting no would help preserve the French social-economic model they have come to love and expect, the very model that righties dismiss as inefficient at best and socialist at worse.
Hanson uses this bit of rhetorical bait-and-switch to set up his entire argument; it won't just be Europeans rejecting the constitution, they are actually just a small part of a global chain of events that is demanding "democracy, open markets, personal freedom, individual rights, pride in national traditions, worry about big government."
Next, Hanson compares the Chinese economy to that of America in the 1870's, belying the real goal of the Republicans to roll back labor, environmental, and consumer protections.
China's red-hot economy - something like America's of 1870, before unionization, environmentalism, and federal regulation - shows just how dead communism is.
A quick tour of history, shows just how grand things were for average Americans during this `gilded age'.
Yet the costs of this indifference to the victims of capital were high. For millions, living and working conditions were poor, and the hope of escaping from a lifetime of poverty slight. That industrialization tightened the net of poverty around America's workers was even admitted by corporate leaders, such as Andrew Carnegie, who noted "the contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer." As late as the year 1900, the United States had the highest job-related fatality rate of any industrialized nation in the world. Most industrial workers still worked a 10-hour day (12 hours in the steel industry), yet earned from 20 to 40 percent less than the minimum deemed necessary for a decent life. The situation was only worse for children, whose numbers in the work force doubled between 1870 and 1900.
This period also, of course, included America's rapacious appetite for material resources and global prestige, leading to such imperial projects as the Spanish-American war (causing the battle against an armed resistance in the Philippines - historical parallels can be frightening, can't they?)
That Hanson would even suggest that China entering a similar period is a positive sign shows just how intellectually dishonest conservative punditry, even of the `academic' variety, is.
From China, Hanson then quickly jumps to the right-wing's favorite topic, Islamic fundamentalism (throwing in derogatory and unfounded insults to North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba along the way, of course).
Oil, terror, anti-Semitism and hating America gave the fundamentalists some resonance, but there were never any ideas. The Islamicists offered nothing to galvanize the Arab masses other than nihilism. That doctrine feeds and employs no one. Instead, we witness the creepy threats and the pyrotechnics of a lunatic ideology going the way of bushido and the kamikazes.
The wholesale dismissal of an entire mass movement is, frankly, frightening. That Hanson can be so confident in American superiority and the degenerate inferiority of those who fight against us is the epitome of arrogance. How does he (or any of the other myriad conservative squawk boxes) expect us to win the hearts and minds of a people when we dismiss their cause entirely?
The irony is, of course, that truth is found in the opposite of Hanson's statement. Our occupying forces clearly are not providing employment, security, or basic services. On the other hand, Iraqi resistance groups, such as those aligned with Muqtada al-Sadr and other Shi'ia clerics, are doing the most effective job of actually providing social services, personal security, and winning the allegiance of the unemployed, malnourished masses (here and here, among many others).
By turning the tables around, Hanson paints the insurgency as fighting against the popular will, which he claims is secretly pining for a good dose of American-style economic and political freedoms. If that were so, why did only 2% of Iraqis see the US as a liberator a year ago, before the carpet bombing of Falluja and other continuing atrocities carried out in the name of the American flag?
These people are not fighting against the "evils of freedom and democracy" as Hanson claims; they are fighting an occupying power. We needn't approve of their actions to understand the cause of them. Our own policies in Iraq--torture in Abu Ghraib, intrusive door-to-door search and seizures, seemingly indiscrimate bombing and shooting of civilians--have fueled these animosities and given credibility to the atrocious tactics used by some elements of the insurgency.
As if this weren't enough, this is when Hanson gets really loopy. In trying to explain this trend of "upheavals," Hanson credits a mixture of global communication, spirituality in the wake of the Pope's death, and Washington Consensus economic policies in China and India.
Global communications now reveal hourly to people abroad how much better life is in Europe than in the Middle East and Asia - and how in America, Australia and Britain the standard of living is even better than in most of Europe.
It's like living in an alternate reality. Yes, people are impoverished in Middle East, but no, seeing our boastful displays of overt consumption and the commoditization of sex won't make the Muslim masses want to emulate our way of life; instead, it verifies the worst of what they have heard from radical groups.
Hanson wraps up with another doozie, emulating Bush's preposterous theory that the reason the `terrorists' are fighting so `vociferously' is because they're losing.
Wounded beasts like Iran, North Korea and bin Laden are most dangerous before they expire.
The obvious question to ask then is would they be the less dangerous if they were beating us? One would expect blustery rhetoric from a near-death opponent, but not a worsening situation in Iraq, a nuclear-armed North Korea, and a resurgent Iran, bolstered by a new, anti-American nationalism. That claim sounds no better wrapped in a published op-ed than in Bush's incoherent press conference.
The bigger picture
This wholesale use of events and situations to prove a point completely contradictory to their actual context is the new MO of the right-wing. They are finally realizing that they can't spin their way out of the mess in Iraq or the Iraqization of Afghanistan -- they just don't even try anymore. This piece is beyond spin, it's into an Orwellian world of doublespeak: up is down and down is up.
We're making progress as long as they keep killing us. They actually want to be like us. Just like the Chinese and Indians, thanks to mass communication.
I can't help but wonder, as others have, do they even listen to themselves? It's as if they believe their own propaganda so much, they can spew off the rhetoric with complete disregard for the actual events.
They're not even spinning them anymore.