Sometimes I want to go home, sit in a hot bath, and open my veins. A self-described liberal at the liberal Washington Post:
But the killing of Osama bin Laden four weeks ago has revived the old debate about whether torture works. Could it be that “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed during the George W. Bush administration helped find bin Laden’s now-famous courier and track him to the terrorist in chief’s now-infamous lair?
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and current administration officials say no. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey and former vice president Dick Cheney say yes.
Joe Nocera from the liberal New York Times:
[T]he Democratic Party might be well served in trying to use the Ryan plan to bury their political opponents, the country itself is not. The debate we need is not about whether Medicare should be reformed, but how. […]It would be nice if we could treat the Ryan plan not as an object of derision but as a launching off point for a serious debate.
Serious people think Dick Cheney and Cheney’s own personal Bieber may be right about everything. Only a hippie would disagree with them.
I wonder if European media sounded this way during the run-up to World War I.
General Stuck
There ought to be a law for laundering wingnuttery.
Cacti
And here we see the disconnect between the Villagers and everyone else.
Did Mr. Villager stop to think that maybe the reason Paul Ryan’s plan is treated as an object of derision…
is because most non-villagers think it’s a really shitty idea?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
In response to the first article:
In response to the second:
We tried having that debate, it was either called Single Payer or Medicare for everyone. But they would not have that debate.
Janeane The Acerbic Goblin
@Cacti:
Bingo.
arguingwithsignposts
Both sides do it. /vsp
Amir_Khalid
I saw that WaPo column. I was amazed that physician and law professor M. Gregg Bloche could have missed such an obvious point: effective or not, torture is wrong. So wrong that it is defined as a war crime, for which penalties up to and including death may apply. That an illegal method is effective in no way mitigates its illegality.
Paul Krugman smacked Joe Nocera down for that NYT column in a blog post on the very same day. K-Thug pointed out that Ryan’s proposal isn’t serious, it’s a load of party-serving nonsense, and so Ryan doesn’t deserve credit for starting a serious discussion.
Ruckus
@Cacti:
Eighty millionth on the shitty idea.
Dennis SGMM
Nocera doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that America is the only industrialized nation without some form of UHC. That probably explains why he thinks that Ryan’s “go broke and die anyway” plan is a good starting point. As Belafon noted above; no Serious Person, and a vanishingly small number of politicians from either party, would ever suggest UHC as a starting point for a debate regarding healthcare.
Roger Moore
My impression is that they were much worse. There was only one side to their stories, the side about how war was necessary and our side was going to wipe the floor with the other guys.
Yutsano
@Cacti: The Village has an Idea, and once the Village has an Idea it becomes ineffable. After that happens you are arguing facts with true believers. The Ryan Plan is serious and worthy of consideration. Nothing will deter them from that Idea.
Dennis SGMM
@Roger Moore:
If you haven’t already read it, I heartily recommend Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August to see just how well that worked out.
Tom Levenson
This is the zombie lie engine in action.
I spoke recently witha guy I’ve known, not well, for a long time — twenty years or so. He’s a mainstream journalist in a well known, significant organ. He took Ryan seriously for exactly the same reason Nocera does. There are long term real issues with medical costs in this country.
That Ryan wasn’t solving them wasn’t the point for my friend. Rather, he was making the debate happen…
And he even agreed, under some pressure, that Ryan’s plan was nonsense. But still it mattered, because now we were talking about it.
It was as if a year of health care debate hadn’t happened.
This is truly where this blog and others have a role to play. It’s boring as hell, but pointing out (with data, or at least links to Kthug) that Ryan’s approach makes every major fiscal and policy outcome worse everytime someone praises his seriousness is the only way to build up enoguh of a pain reflex so that some of these folks stop saying silly shit.
they do notice. But they are slow learners. Very slow.
The Dangerman
When (if?) I get to build a place, it’s having an Ofuro (japanese bath) for sure. A little sage added and I can forget all the crap of the day (read: fuck Mukasy and Cheney; assholes).
Hill Dweller
As I said on one of the other posts, Chuck Todd’s summation of the President’s European trip on NBC News tonight(Sat.) consisted of four things: A cursory mention of Libya and Poland, and breakdowns of three ‘faux paus'(pen out of ink, writing the wrong date in a visitors log, and continuing his toast after the band prematurely started ‘God Save the Queen’). That was it. Six fucking days in Europe, and Todd was only concerned with pushing non-important bullshit the Right would love.
It’s been a dark couple of decades for the MSM, and the country has paid dearly.
The electorate needs to get their shit in order, else we become Rome part deux.
Librarian
Forget WWI. If today’s Villagers had been around during the Civil War, they would have urged Lincoln to meet with the Confederate leaders and come to some kind of compromise to end the war, something that would let the poor oppressed southerners keep their slaves, and they would have ridiculed his naive insistence that the Union was fighting for freedom and liberty, and they would have dismissed the Emancipation Proclamation as a “bargaining chip” and as an attack on the slaveowners’ property rights.
Roger Moore
@Dennis SGMM:
I haven’t read The Guns of August, but I’ve read enough about WWI to know how stupid and awful it was. I’d recommend the chapter in The Face of Battle on the first day of the Somme.
Gus diZerega
We have had a dominant elite for some time that seems to be becoming more and more nepotistic. Increasingly these people get to the top entirely by who they know rather than by their actual talents. Those who were wrong about Iraq have flourished, those who were right have been ignored, Ditto for financial reform. Competence is selected against because such likely do not raise up truly competent people because they know they aren’t. Finally, they have often been bought off by money, media exposure, and the myth they are somehow superior to the rest of us.
In other words, it seems that America’s dominant elite is getting less and less competent, more and more corrupt, and more and more parasitical, a spiral downwards that will not stop until they destroy the country or are replaced.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Yutsano:
i agree with this, especially in the torture example. its like mcain etc settled the meme that had very little going for it to begin with. it was, and is an abstraction meant to credit bush, remove credit from obama, and justify the otherwise unjustifiable.
it was failed on arrival the first time, not much has been said since, so now they are gathering up, and hoping to take a second crack at defending torture.
this time without all the excitement that beat down any attempt at floating a pro-bush meme the first time. they will try again, at some point, by then, it will be automatic, and assumed as the consequent, that torture helped id the courier, and so it goes.
Dennis SGMM
@Tom Levenson:
The Villagers’ complete disregard of the CBO report on Ryan’s plan bears out Yutsano’s observation that once the Village has an Idea mere facts aren’t enough to deter them from promulgating it. I blame that on the paucity of ideas in the Village.
Dennis SGMM
@Roger Moore:
Thanks, I’ll add that to my list. I loves me some history.
Chris
“It would be nice if we could treat the Ryan plan not as an object of derision but as a launching off point for a serious debate.”
It would be nice if Paul Ryan and Joe Nocera could contribute to a serious debate, but from what each has been saying and doing, it’s clear that neither is interested in that.
On the other hand, maybe Ryan leaves Nocera a nice stack of bills on the bedside table after he goes to such trouble to fluff Ryan and his plan.
Dennis SGMM
@Chris:
By the lights of Nocera, et al, it would have been nice if on December 8, 1941, we could have used Pearl Harbor as a starting point for a debate about imperialism in the Pacific.
Ash Can
@Tom Levenson:
This. Where have these people been? That horse done left the barn, headed for the coast, and boarded the ship that done sailed.
Rihilism
@Librarian: Sadly, I believe many of the Villagers of that era did exactly what you described…
Ruckus
@Gus diZerega:
The Peter Principal at work.
Roger Moore
@Dennis SGMM:
Keegan’s earlier books are really excellent. They’re really more a study of what armies, battles, and generals are like than a detailed history. There’s history in them, but it serves to illustrate rather than narrate. His later work, which is more conventional history, is less exciting.
James E. Powell
It would be nice if we could treat extending Medicare to the whole population and raising taxes on the rich to pay for it not as an object of derision but as a launching off point for a serious debate.
LosGatosCA
It’s a fact of the historical record that journalistic malfeasance pre-dates WWI. It really came into it’s own during the Spanish-American War. Yellow journalism.
Your reference to the run up to WWI is appropriate in a larger sense. That time was one in which the scale of human activity exceeded the capabilities of the leadership of that era by a wide- and as was proven in the long run – and a dangerous margin. The small people with small ideas and their nasty, counterproductive worldviews led not only to senseless violence on an immediate, massive, uncontrollable scale but the aftermath was handled with even worse affect. It took several generations after the unconscionable human tragedies of Stalin, Hitler, WWII, the Holocaust to finally create a paradigm that enabled ever increasing freedom and self-determination. Though it was not in a straight line, not without challenges it proved durable.
But since the 1980’s these institutions have been under attack with ever increasing recklessness and consequential damage. And starting with Clinton’s impeachment, then the whole Bush II debacle with Iraq at the center of a profoundly unserious and inexcusably incompetent excuses for leaders the US has led, but not bee the sole perpetrator, of a movement of pedestrian leadership not seen since the run up to WWI.
Failure of vision, of will, of technocratic competence on a global basis. None of the US allies, China, or Russia have produced any leader of historical note. As a consequence the most selfish, even stupid possible set of leaders have emerged to tolerate and even champion mass ignorance on a whole range of issues economic and moral.
The world leadership has become complacent in their incompetence, fully tolerant of mediocrity and much less most of the time, and indulgent, letting people voice their irrational fears and prejudices as though they were credible alternatives to facts and critical thinking. The press is just along for the ride, no thought given to their historic mandate or the influence they can bring to bear to educate people on the issues.
Fax Paladin
@Ruckus: No, it’s the Dilbert Principle at work. The Peter Principle assumes that these guys were competent at their jobs at some point, rather than incompetents hired straight into management on the strength of their connections and their MBAs.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
What matters is that the Republicans are now in the debate about what to do about healthcare. When it was the Democrats talking about it and the Republicans sicking their fingers in their ears and shouting, “I can’t hear you”, we weren’t spending enough time discussing the issues. When the Republicans suggest that our plan should be to throw granny to the wolves, the Democrats are refusing to participate in the debate when they say “Hell No!”
Violet
@Tom Levenson:
It didn’t. That was a year of debate on the rise of the Republicans from the ashes of the 2008 election, the impact of the Tea Party, Bart Stupak and abortion, Scott Brown, Nancy Pelosi, and the ability of the Democrats to get the votes they needed. There wasn’t much actual debate on health care going on in Villager media land.
Dennis SGMM
@Roger Moore:
Ah, thanks for the detail. I’ll look for his earlier work then. “How it was,” is to me the best part of reading history.
OzoneR
can’t possibly understand why progressives have a problem messaging.
JasonF
@Yutsano:
I disagree that the idea is ineffable. In point of fact, the idea is going to eff a lot of people.
Alan in SF
The Republican Party would be well served to use the Communist Manifesto as a launching off point for a serious debate on economic policy.
Rihilism
@Tom Levenson: Classic group-think. The idea is reinforced so frequently in their interactions with their colleagues that eventually they feel that they have a stake in defending the idea. Backing away from what they just recently held to be a reasonable proposition becomes an embarrassing exercise. Overcoming that embarrassment depends upon the degree of embarrassment and the intransigence of the idea holder, which in turn defines the length of time required to convince reasonable people to act reasonably.
This is why I am attracted to people like Cole and others that can change their minds, since I’m quite familiar with process of overcoming prejudices based on group loyalty rather than valid information. It requires the rather difficult ability to step back and notice when we are clinging to useless information as well as a healthy sense of self deprecation which allows one to make light of one’s embarrassment thereby diminishing the power that that embarrassment has on our decision making process.
Its too bad some reasonable people are trapped into defending ideas that they don’t necessarily want to defend simply because they are afraid of the consequences of changing their minds…
TenguPhule
We must Destroy the Village to Save America.
Hell, I’ll agree to any plan that involves Brooks head on a pike.
James E. Powell
What consequences are they afraid of? That they won’t be invited to all tomorrow’s parties?
Shalimar
It would be nice if police could treat a sociopath’s plot to kill you not as something worthy of investigation and possibly protection for you but as a launching off point for a serious debate on whether you deserve to die.
Pat
Out and out riots are the only thing that will wake our politicians up, but that won’t happen because we are way too busy sitting around drinking cheap beer with the remote control in hand flipping through 200 channels for “something to watch”!
Rihilism
@James E. Powell:
Unfortunately, yes.
Maude
@Pat:
When people get violent, they get locked up. Demonstrations are fine, but the power is centered in DC and they keep it to themselves.
Reagan made it fashionable to be mediocre and ignorant. Bush capped it off with real stubborn stupidity.
You aren’t paying attention to what is going on out in the country. The fear mongering about Medicare and Medicaid is a continuation of the fear mongering about 9/11. The Repubs lost their drum to beat so that people would follow them when Bin Laden met his end.
The garbage that the Repubs are spewing isn’t playing well in Peoria.
This is a time of change. It is very different now than when Bush II was prez. The feel of the country is not the same.