The Short Happy Life of Samson Agonistes

We are, of course, all familiar with Mr. Rove's recent remarks regarding "liberals":* 

Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

Now, for myself, I'd generally chalk this up to cheap partisan hackery -- red meat for the red meat brigade.  A little rhetorical excess for the base never did no-one any harm, after all.  American as apple pie; speechifying like this has been with us since the Revolution (and before!).  Certainly, it's nothing to get worked up about, and doesn't require a response of any kind to the <i>pro forma</i> demands an apology. 

Yes, normally, I'd dismiss Rove's ramblings with the same bored wave as I dismiss Dean's babblings about evil Republicans or whatever Nancy Pelosi raged about last Tuesday.  (The mark of a true hack is that you can pick a day at random and still be certain that they said something that wasn't worth hearing.)

Yet, I have been advised that, in these thin-skinned times, it is vitally important that all rhetoric be proportional and based on sound evidence.  Red meat for the base must undergo a special USDA check; all analogies will be taken literally.  Accordingly, I'm compelled to ask:

If "[l]iberals [allegedly] saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," then it should be fairly easy for Mr. Rove to identify, by name, one example?

*  *  *  *  *

There used to be much talk about the death of outrage in America.  As the last few years have confirmed, such talk is completely misplaced.  Outrage has become a kind of political currency, a perpetual motion (and money) machine for a certain segment of society.  Outrage sells books, promotes personalities, and, sometimes, builds giant puppets.  It's the wonder of the age.

So, make no mistake:  the calls for Rove to resign or lash himself thirty times or walk naked through the streets with a scarlet "A" tatooed on his chest are silly.  But also don't forget that we all deserve this silliness.  Outrage is the path that we've chosen.  (If you're interested in getting off the path, it means ignoring and lampooning the outrage mongers -- who, needless to say, seem overrepresented on the right of late.)

*See also our own Hilzoy, who has a different take.

Comments

[kenB]

Rove isn't being honest. He's lying.

So if you felt that Rove believed what he said, you'd have no problem with it?

[Jonas Cord]

Felix,

Rove isn't being honest. He's lying. This is not my opinion.

I don't think you have a reasonable definition of what a fact is, what an opinion is, what honesty is and what a lie is.

[Jesurgislac]

kenB: So if you felt that Rove believed what he said, you'd have no problem with it?

Don't know about Felix, Ken, but if I thought Rove honestly believed everyone who voted Democratic, and every self-identified liberal, was a traitor, then I'd think he was a nutter on the scale of Fred Phelps.

As Rove does not appear to be quite that much of a raving lunatic, he's presumably just telling slanderous lies.

[kenB]

Jes, the honesty thing was the only distinction Felix was making between Dean's statements and Rove's, so I thought I'd try to draw him out a little.

[felixrayman]

So if you felt that Rove believed what he said, you'd have no problem with it?

If Rove did not often say things that were factually incorrect, I would be more likely to believe he was honest. Obviously that is not the only criteria I use to judge an individual's statements. There would still be the matter that he issues heinous and hateful propaganda diatribes, which can be, of course, be done without lying.

the honesty thing was the only distinction Felix was making between Dean's statements and Rove's

Incorrect:

And again you are missing the point that Dean is being righteous and honest

If I felt that Rove's statements were both honest and morally justifiable, I would have no problem with them. They are neither.

[Sad Mack]

"I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game."

-- MSNBC host Chris Matthews, in a phone call to Ambassador Joseph Wilson after the exposure of Wilson's wife as an undercover CIA operative.

[kenB]

My mistake -- it seemed like you were emphasizing the dishonesty. So you believe that Dean was both righteous and honest with this:

While discussing the hardship of working all day and then standing in line for eight hours to vote, Dean had said, "Well, Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives."

[felixrayman]

The full quote was:

I think, frankly, we ought to have voting on -- either make the Tuesday a holiday or else move it to another day where people don't -- (cheers, applause) -- can get out and vote.

You -- (applause continues) -- you know, the idea that you have to wait on line for eight hours to cast your ballot in Florida -- there's something the matter with that. You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever, and get home and then have a -- still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well, Republicans, I guess, can do that, because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives. (Light applause.) But for ordinary working people, who have to work eight hours a day, they have kids, they got to get home to those kids, the idea of making them stand for eight hours to cast their ballot for democracy is wrong. We ought to make voting easier to do

I don't have a problem with that. I notice you often take things out of context though. I'm still waiting for you to tell me where the transcript of the whole "a struggle of good and evil" speech is. Hilzoy pointed to an article that had a few other quotes from it, but I would like to see one that had the full context - like, you know, more than one phrase taken out of context from a sentence. I assume you saw such a transcript before you decided that the phrase was talking about Democrats and Republicans, am I correct?

[kenB]

I pulled that quotes from an ABC site. Obviously it didn't include the full context, so thanks for providing it. Now can you explain how the context justifies it? Sure seems like he's contrasting Republicans with "ordinary working people", which I suspect I would find offensive if I was an ordinary working Republican.

[Tad Brennan]

Katherine--

I am also perplexed about the Italian arrest order, and my inclinations are in conflict.

On the one hand, it does seem to me that some of the Rove/Bush/DeLay gang's major figures are in violation of international law and American law, and I would like to see them in front of a court one of these days.

On the other hand, I don't think that the CIA agents were the right ones to go after ,and I don't think that a covert abduction is the right action to treat as criminal.

In fact, Bush-hating liberal that I am, I am actually in *favor* of having the CIA snatch people off the streets of foreign countries, provided certain conditions are met:

E.g., there has to be good intel supporting the view that *this* guy is someone we want (as opposed to the ridiculous sweeps in Afghanistan and Iraq that caught up all sorts of innocent bystanders). And it looks like that condition was met; they clearly mounted a major operation to snatch *him*, not just a random body in the wrong place.

E.g., the operation should be approved by the host country, if at all possible. (If not possible, e.g. if our guys can snatch Bin Laden now but Pakistan says no, then I say do it anyhow, and hash it out later diplomatically). As you point out, these agents most likely *did* have permission from Berlusconi's govt, so that condition's met, too.

E.g., the treatment of the suspect after the snatch has to follow international norms wrt torture, rendition, etc. There should be due process, charges should be prepared, there should be no indefinite detention, and so on. That's the condition that seems *not* to have been met in this case, and maybe that's why the Italian judge is going after them.

But then that just gets us back to the Bush gang's fascination with torture, and how it is a deep, deep corruption in the American system right now. The people to arrest are the ones who have authorized and condoned the torture and rendition policies, not the CIA agents who did the snatch.

That's why on the one hand I am don't mind seeing foreign legal systems pushing back against the Bush gang's illegal behavior--if Bush has forgotten what America's values are, and won't listen to the Americans who want to remind him, then maybe hearing it from a foreign court will help.

On the other hand, I think these are the wrong arrests, for the wrong reasons, and I wish they weren't happening. My gut sentiment is that it's just fine with me if the CIA can grab someone in Italy, provided conditions like the ones above are met (and probably some others you can list). We do have real enemies, and if the CIA can grab one of them then I'm all in favor of it.

And I worry that the result of this case will be that many Americans who share my gut sentiment in favor of robust self-defense will decide that the Italian reaction is just hysterical anti-Americanism, and so the push-back against torture and renditions can be dismissed (the Italians will be treated as though they're French). I'm afraid it is going to be like taking the wrong case to appeals--you risk losing the larger principle if you try to fight for it with a weak case.

[felixrayman]

Sure seems like he's contrasting Republicans with "ordinary working people", which I suspect I would find offensive if I was an ordinary working Republican.

Or one who confused the phrase "a lot" with "all". His point here is pretty clear - barriers to voting for working class Americans should be done away with. People with less money are more likely to vote Democrat as are blacks and some other minorities. And historically there have been times when some Republicans have tried to put up barriers to prevent those people from voting. So no, I don't mind the sarcastic jibe one bit.

When Howard Dean says, "We ought to make voting easier to do", he speaks for me. It's going on 5 years now since dire problems with the voting system in this country became apparent, what has been done to get them fixed?

Now, I'm still waiting for the full transcript of the context surrounding the "a struggle of good and evil" quote. Do you have a link to it? If not, how do you know he is talking about a struggle between Democrats and Republicans?

[Barry]

Tad:

"On the other hand, I don't think that the CIA agents were the right ones to go after ,and I don't think that a covert abduction is the right action to treat as criminal."

Ideally, Bush & Co would be seeking spiritual counsel right now, as their appeal for commutations to life imprisonment without parole were being considered.

Actual ideally, none of those people would have come within a mile of actual power.

But we live in neither of those worlds. In the world that we live in, various countries saying that they won't cooperate with the CIA running amok is what is needed. That their governments still have the say over people being snatched out of them.

[felixrayman]

The people to arrest are the ones who have authorized and condoned the torture and rendition policies, not the CIA agents who did the snatch.

Do you think Italian prosecutors have access to the type of evidence that would justify going after people higher up than the CIA agents? I don't see why you would treat it any differently than an organized crime investigation - go after the workers who are committing the crimes on the street and use a promise of leniency for cooperation with a larger investigation.

If Italian secret agents were illegally abducting people from say, New York City, and sending them to a third country to be tortured, would you feel that those agents should not be arrested?

[Jesurgislac]

Tad: On the other hand, I don't think that the CIA agents were the right ones to go after ,and I don't think that a covert abduction is the right action to treat as criminal.

Wrong. A covert abduction is kidnapping. I am completely in favor of treating kidnapping as a criminal action, and of always going after the kidnappers. That the kidnappers are employed by the CIA does not change my attitude to this one iota - except that I rather hope their employers end up getting prosecuted, too.

[ral]

It seems Joe Conason took it personally.

[liberal japonicus]

I am also perplexed about the Italian arrest order, and my inclinations are in conflict.

I think it could be one of two things (though both may be possible) The first is that anti war feeling in Italy is so strong that the government is compelled to do something. With an investigation like this, it is possible to stretch it out (showing that 'something is being done', yet not actually doing anything). The second is that a more independent judiciary (I'm thinking that the independence of the judiciary is similar to that of Spain, where you had Garzon call for the extradition of Pinochet.

I agree that it is unfair to go after the foot soldiers when those who ordered go free, but Kissinger is still walking the streets, so I think that's life.

This factoid at the end of the Guardian article was interesting.

The report said investigations showed the 13 ran up $144,984 in hotel bills in Milan, and two couples took holidays in northern Italy after delivering Omar at the Aviano air base.

It could be that they are setting them up as bad apples, or they are aiming at popular opinion.

What I think this does demonstrate is that the fabric is slowly unravelling. When all the countries agree on some level that this is an appropriate course of action, it will happen. But it appears that the arrogance of the US is dissolving any unspoken agreements that were made.

[Jesurgislac]

liberal japonicus: I agree that it is unfair to go after the foot soldiers when those who ordered go free

Not really. The CIA agents who turned kidnappers were committing a crime. True, those who ordered them to commit the crime of kidnapping deserve to be prosecuted too, but "just following orders" is not a defense when the orders were illegal. It's not unfair to go after the people who actually carried out the crime.

[KCinDC]

It's not just antiwar sentiment, but anti-US sentiment, accentuated by the Giuliana Sgrena incident and the handling of the subsequent investigation, which itself reopened wounds from the investigation and light punishment of the "hotdogging" by US Marine pilots in Italy that killed 20 people in a ski gondola in 1998.

[liberal japonicus]

Not really. The CIA agents who turned kidnappers were committing a crime.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if they use the prosecutions as a way of protecting those further up the chain, (and I'm conspiratorially minded enough to think that it's possible in this case and could be a way for Berlusconi to keep his coalition together, though this is more based on my dislike for Berlusconi rather than any reading of Italian politics), it is unfair. I'm not saying they are entitled to some Nuremburg defense or anything like that. The addition of the couples going off to vacation after sending the cleric to Egypt seems telling in that regard.

Also the differences in regard to the Sweden case of extraordinary rendition are interesting, in that the Italian case seems to suggest that the CIA was operating without authorization, while the Swedish process seems to have been done with the approval of the Swedish authorities. Also, you didn't have the agents taking in the sites in Stockholm before or after they did their work.

KC's point about anti-US sentiment is also important to note. At some point, treating sovereign countries like doormats is going to come back to bite. I would say that I can hope, but I don't want to be accused of treason...

[Gromit]

Here is an interesting take on the Democrats' peculiar love of bashing Howard Dean. The short version is that the Democratic party is far more disciplined than I give them credit for, but that discipline is put to use in the service of fundraising and maintaining the existing power structure within the party, rather than winning elections:

Two things make Democratic Party powers lose sleep over Dean. The first and less distinct is his taste for the populist rhetorical style. He has a flair for articulating popular anger in popular terms, and he is very good at seeing where to strike. It doesn't matter much that he is sometimes inarticulate or in less than full command of his factual claims for the same reason it hasn't mattered in the far more egregious case of George W. Bush: Rank-and-file Democrats and independents who see Dean tend to like him. The unprecedented war chest he amassed from nickel-and-dime donors before the Iowa Massacre is ample proof of it. And this brings us to the more material reason the Democrats hate Howard Dean: He threatens to refigure the fundraising base of the party, however modestly, and thus to shift the balance of power in the party hierarchy.

This is unacceptable. But to see why, you first have to set aside one of the great American civics-class myths, which is that the first mission of political parties is to win elections. In his posthumously released 1993 book Indispensable Enemies, the late critic and political historian Walter Karp expressed the rule thus: "Insofar as a...party is controlled at all, the sole abiding purpose, the sole overriding interest of those who control it, is to maintain that control. This, not election victory, is the fundamental and unswerving principle of party politics in America." One might say that winning elections is the lifeblood of a party, and past a certain point the party collapses if it does not keep a sufficient share of power and patronage. But job one is to assure the survival of the prevailing cast of characters--the officers, powerbrokers, and, now more than ever, the main funders of the party apparatus. This observation is based on the hardly radical idea that people in power tend not to surrender that power without a fight.

Policy positions aside, the two things that drew me to Howard Dean during the primaries were 1) his populist style of campaigning and 2) his small-donor fund-raising approach. If the author's analysis is correct, this puts me, as a voting Democrat, in direct opposition to the prime movers within the party. I find this thought at once reassuring and unsettling, and I'm left uncertain how to act on this new understanding.

[hilzoy]

Gromit: I think the author underplays the importance of winning elections. In the final analysis, the point of controlling a party is to do something with it -- pursue noble goals, hand out patronage, or anything in between -- and if you don't win elections, you can't really do anything with it. (Consider how little would be gained by taking over, say, the Reform Party.) I also think the move to small donor fundraising has to be seen by more or less anyone as a good thing, at least if the small donors aren't won at the expense of enough big donors that it's an all-round money loser. But I imagine some people are spooked by it, because small donors are less easy to get your mind around, or to figure out how to motivate. (I mean, with a few large donors, you can always take them out to lunch and ask.)

I basically like Dean, but I think he has a real gift for putting his foot in his mouth. And it's not just a matter of being straightforward: you can be straightforward without saying dumb things, and dean in particular ought to know that the press will be going over everything he says with a fine-toothed comb. That said, I respect him for this:

"My basic take on Howard Dean's DNC chairmanship is simple. After the 2004 elections, Dean had a choice. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have assumed leadership of an abrasive and divisive faction of the Democratic party, as a proto-candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination. But instead, he chose to pursue the difficult and often thankless job of party chairman, building on the aspects of his 2004 candidacy that virtually all Democats appreciated: small-dollar fundraising, and grass-roots efforts to expand the ranks of party activists. For all my differences of opinion with Dean's 2004 campaign, his self-sacrificing choice afterwards earned my respect, and my loyalty."

(Actually, that whole post, by Ed Kilgore, is quite good.)

I'm still a Clarkie, though.

[DaveC]

Howard Dean is making a fool out of himself by pounding on the Ohio election

It's not really a very good case.

[Gromit]

Hilzoy: Gromit: I think the author underplays the importance of winning elections. In the final analysis, the point of controlling a party is to do something with it -- pursue noble goals, hand out patronage, or anything in between -- and if you don't win elections, you can't really do anything with it.

I'm not so sure. I've known too many other real-world examples in which maintaining status and privilege comes before the stated mission of the organization. The business world and government are full of folks who are willing to sabotage the success of others -- frequently at the expense of their own supposed goals -- in order to avoid being pushed out of power or made to look less competent by comparison. This sort of thing might not be infinitely sustainable, but it is pretty shocking how long it can be dragged out. And how do you account for the current state of the party? The Democrats aren't winning elections, and they keep making their denunciations of Dean's impolite comments or Durbin's harsh words as big a story as the policies these guys are criticizing. And all this happens even though the public really doesn't care for Bush's policies. Why?

I basically like Dean, but I think he has a real gift for putting his foot in his mouth. And it's not just a matter of being straightforward: you can be straightforward without saying dumb things, and dean in particular ought to know that the press will be going over everything he says with a fine-toothed comb.

You know, intellectually I understand where you are coming from, but how does this fit the real-world data? The scream aside, when Dean makes a gaffe, it's an on-message gaffe. Even as they are repeated ad-nauseum by incensed right-wing pundits, they put across the messages he should be putting across: the Republican party is the party of privilege and intolerance. When Kerry or Gore made a gaffe (or a reasonable comment that got spun as a gaffe) they were statements that made them look self-aggrandizing, wishy-washy, or weak on issues where they needed to be strong. And the author is right, as much of the focus on his verbal blunders comes from Democrats as comes from Republicans, and the criticism sounds very coordinated. If the party luminaries really were trying to subtly sabotage Dean's presidential aspirations, and the populist groundswell within the party needed to make those aspirations come true, how would it look any different than the way the party is treating him right now?

Besides, listen to our current president speak. Worrying about besting him in public speaking is as pointless as worrying about matching his heroic military service record. There are other areas that need far more urgent attention, like the ability to inspire people to care about issues enough to vote on them, and to make genuine emotional connections with voters. Clinton could do this. Bush does this. In my view, Dean does this. Kerry and Gore were terrible at this.

[Anarch]

The business world and government are full of folks who are willing to sabotage the success of others -- frequently at the expense of their own supposed goals -- in order to avoid being pushed out of power or made to look less competent by comparison. This sort of thing might not be infinitely sustainable, but it is pretty shocking how long it can be dragged out...

...and how much damage can be inflicted before the dragging out is done. I'm still somewhat surprised that von, sidereal et al. seem not to acknowledge this problem -- or at least, haven't responded to my various enunciations of this criticism.