Old folks (people my age): Click here and enjoy a Christmas nostaliga wallow.

 

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The questions from the troops for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were considerably more friendly on his Christmas Eve visit to Iraq than they were on his previous trip to the region a couple of weeks ago.

"How do we win the war in the media?" asked one soldier in Mosul. Another soldier in Tikrit wondered why there is not more coverage of reconstruction efforts going on in the country.

"I guess what's news has to be bad news to get on the press," Rumsfeld responded to the first question - after supposing, with a big grin, "that does not sound like a question that was planted by the press."

No, but it does sound like a question that was planted by Karl Rove.

I'm usually in favor of more inclusive language, greater sensitivity, etc. etc. But obsessing about the emotional turmoil of getting an abortion just doesn't work. Since we fundamentally believe that there's nothing wrong with pre-viability abortion, shouldn't our job instead be to persuade women that they shouldn't feel emotionally whipsawed if they choose to get an abortion? It's awfully hard to take both sides.

To this generation, the “choice” of a legal abortion is no longer something to celebrate. It is a decision made in crisis, and it is never one made happily. Have you ever talked to a woman who has had an abortion? Even a married, intentionally pregnant woman who has had a “D and C” for a dying or dead embryo? A college student whose birth control failed? I promise you, such a woman does not talk about exercising the “right to choose.” You may accuse her -- and me -- of taking such rights for granted, and maybe you’d be right. But mainly she will tell you how sad she is, how she wished she hadn’t had to make that “choice,” how unpleasant the procedure was. She is more likely depressed than defiant.

When, for instance, I wrote a column suggesting that Bernard Kerik was a bad choice for secretary of homeland security, I got a bucket full of obscene e-mails right in my face. I was denounced over and over again as a liberal who, moreover, never would have written something similar about anyone Bill Clinton had named. This would be news to Clinton.

What struck me about the e-mails was how none of these writers paid any attention to what I had to say. Instead, they preferred to deal with a caricature -- someone who belonged to a movement, a conspiracy, and was taking orders in the service of some vast, nefarious cause.

Here I'm supposed to inject the "fair and balanced" clause -- there are such people on both ends of the political spectrum. And there are. But not nearly in the same proportion.

I've seen this over and over again on every liberal blog as it gets more popular. Right-wing movement conversatives (where "conservative" is a complete misnomer") start to infest the comments with nasty remarks and that combiniation of victimization and gloating peculiar to the right wing, and then as soon as they're called on it in any way, they start to complain that the "liberals are rude, liberals are haters, liberals aren't practicing the tolerance they preach, liberals don't respect free speech."

It's the equivalent of pissing on someone's living room carpet, and then complaining because they're not sufficiently gracious. It's a particularly odious form of trolling, and I've got no patience with it, because it detracts from anything resembling constructive conversation (as it's doing right now). The folks at BOP who control the comments are far more patient than I am, but that's their business.

The point of my post was that with a double-standard being imposed there can never be an "honest" debate. Rather, if the blog masters here only enforce the rules on the opponents while allowing the hate fetishists (paperwight) free-reign there is NO desire to have an honest debate. Might as well turn the comments into nothing more than a honey pool for the sycophants/hate fetishists and bloggers to roll around together in.

This is the box we're in. If you are a regular here, you know that I usually delete comments from trolls. This is not to shut down debate. Indeed, if someone disagrees with something I've written and posts a reasoned and factually supported argument expressing disagreement, I'd be happy to leave the comment there for all to read. Indeed, I may argue back. I love to argue, actually. I appreciate someone who's a good argue-er with whom I can butt heads, so to speak. 

However, that's not the kind of post rightie trolls leave. Rightie trolls leave posts that say you're a liberal so you stink, except with more vulgarity. Rightie troll posts rarely come with reason or factual support. Usually rightie troll posts are nothing but gratuitous insult. If there is support, it's generally a statement of some rightie myth that's been proved untrue a thousand times over. And since I don't want to be responsible for the propagation of lies, off my blog they go.

If you spend time cruising both sides of the blogosphere, IMO there is a marked difference in overall tone between right and left. There's plenty of snarkiness all around, and it's no secret that left and right don't trust each other. But generally, leftie bloggers post about current events and explain (with reason and factual support) what the blogger likes or does not like about said events. And generally, rightie bloggers just spew out hate.

The few rightie bloggers who manage a civil tone are still intellectually dishonest about it, dismissing any news story that violates their ideological sensitivities as "liberal bias." Whether the facts presented in the story are or are not true is rarely a consideration. Just publishing something the rightie doesn't want to hear is an act of bias. 

If a news story is too obviously true to dismiss, any unfortunate aspects of the story are somehow the fault of the "left." Here's a classic example, courtesy of Pandagon.  

Recently, Peter Daou started a site called The Daou Report that featured snips from the left blogosphere in the left column and the right blogosphere in the right column. I use the past tense because, in the past few days, the right column has been empty. I regret that, because the right column was a rich compendium of vomit and bile and would go a long way toward illustrating the point I'm making. But perhaps Mr. Daou was feeling a tad contaminated, as I tend to do after surfing the right blogosphere. (If there is another reason, I sincerely want to hear it.)

It appears I'm not seeing the right column because of display problems, but I'm told it is still there. So if you can see it, check out the right column.

But, courtesy of The Daou Report, here's a nice post from Not Geniuses:

Bullies are powerful. Bullies are popular. Roaming the halls of junior high, wallet-chain jingling, bullies answer your begs for mercy and appeals for reason with Five Good Reasons of their own.

But worse than the bully is the inevitable sidekick, the sniveling half-pint who is often a victim of the bully himself, but teams up with the bully out of cowardice and self-hatred. I call this guy The Squeak.

The Squeak is always there, usually doing the majority of the verbal hectoring so the bully doesn't have to. The bully bullies, and The Squeak gets in a few slaps of his own, relieved that someone else is on the business end of the knuckle sandwiches.

In our national political bully/victim dynamic, in which the Right gets to kick the Left, and kick and kick and kick the Left, and then complain that the mean old Left scuffed the Right's Cole Haans, the role of The Squeak is usually played by our press corps. ...

I often wonder what The Squeak feels when he joins the bully to bash his powerless friends, liberals who've had the guts to say "No" to the bullies of the Right. It must be an awesome rush of superiority and strength to be on the side of the powerful against the weak. What a relief, too, to finally stop worrying and love the Republicans; resisting the march of Soldiers of the Movement is, well, painful and frustrating. It is a hero's errand, The Squeak tells himself, to Souljah the Democratic Party from the life-threatening perch of the New York Times Op-Ed page. Maybe, just maybe, the bully will favor him over the others, The Squeak hopes secretly. The bully's nasty, all right, but he's also misunderstood, and I just know I could get through to him if I can prove that I'm as mean of a liberal-basher as he is, Sir Squeaky reasons.

The thing about The Squeak, is, though, he always gets screwed in the end. The bully inevitably gets tired of The Squeak's flattery, the constant nag of the "Me too, boss!" And The Squeak ends up assuming the position along with all the rest of us, having done nothing but fetch the bully's toilet plunger.

It's a really good post; be sure to read all of it. As I say, the box we're in is that we liberals are vilified and lied about freely on the blogosphere and in the Main Stream Media, but when we fight back we're told we're not being tolerant. And some of us are weenies enough that we back down.

Not me. 

Now, a rightie reading this might be saying, you are stereotyping righties. Well, no, I don't think so. There are conservatives who write with reason and factual support, but they don't tend to be part of the rightie pack. A good example is the libertarian Lew Rockwell site, which features a lot of articles with which I do not necessarily agree, but to which the authors have applied some independent reasoning and factual support. 

But then, as Mr. Rockwell does think for himself and considers facts, he is not a big George Bush supporter.

The bald truth is that to be a Bush supporter means that you are (a) ignorant of what's going on; (b) suffering massive cognitive dissonance; or (c) are a soulless sociopathic bastard. 

Jeanne d'Arc speaks of a rightie neighborhood who lightly suggested (in the context of illuminating an outdoor Christmas decoration) that if a kid stuck his finger in a light socket it would teach him responsibility.

I laughed, and then, as the conversation continued about responsibility and learning lessons from experience, I realized it wasn't a joke. He was willing to kill a few neighborhood kids for the honor of good old American self reliance.

Not really. I don't think. This is actually a very nice man, who, if anything went wrong in your life, would be the first to show up at the door with condolences and offers of help. But he has a certain ideology and it leads to  a cavalier attitude toward children's safety. What's more, it struck me dumb. Someone stood in my living room, next to the plate of salt dough ornaments my daughter made that morning, and plans to paint today, next to a tree full of paste-jewelled pine cones, cardboard snowflakes, clothespin reindeer, and tin-foil stars, with a nine-year-old listening to Jingle Bell Rock in the next room, and told me it was okay to kill or injure a child if it made the lights on the house shine a little brighter. And I didn't know what to say.

Merry Christmas?

Like a lot of people, Kevin Drum has been asking lately how conservatives get bizarre memes like the idea that liberals are trying to destroy Christmas into the public discourse. (In fact, destroying Christmas is way down at the bottom of my To Do list. Today I'm baking gingerbread and helping to sandpaper and paint the salt dough stars, and tomorrow, I still have some wrapping to do. At the rate I'm going, I won't have time to destroy Christmas at least until Sunday, and by then, what's the point? The siege will just have to wait until next year.) But I'm wondering, as well, how the most insane conservative speech has slipped so easily into private discourse.

What disturbs me most about the suggestion that a concern for children's safety is a plot by weak liberals is that the framework isn't at all uncommon. I frequently hear conservatives -- not on tv or on the radio, but in casual conversations like this -- say the most outrageous, indefensible things, in a tone so nonchalant that it leaves me speechless, not quite believing I heard what I thought I heard. They don't feel any need to explain their beliefs, even the most bizarre ones. they just assume you agree, and can't take in why you wouldn't.

I don't think people on the left do this. At least I don't, and I don't know people who do.  I don't casually drop my political or social beliefs into conversations. But maybe I should begin to learn how.

Damn straight.

I postulate that rightiness (as opposed to actual political conservatism, which is something else entirely) is less an ideology than a pathology, bordering on sociopathy. Those who don't tidily conform to their world view are not human beings, in their minds. Democrats, liberals, neighborhood children who might be electrocuted, the poor, and often minorities --are not human beings. Just caricatures. They don't bleed. They don't think. They don't have souls, or mothers. Therefore, it's easy for righties to suggest that killing a few of these vermin might be a good thing, and no twinge of conscienceness stops them. This is sociopathy on its face.

Dismissing one's political opposition as psychological deviants is an un-liberal thing to do. Liberalism by definition (American Heritage Dictionary) is "A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority." Liberals by nature appreciate that people have diverse opinions, and that no one ideology is always right. Liberals by nature are respectful of opposing points of view. 

But I say that being a liberal doesn't mean being a patsy. Liberalism cannot exist where sociopathy is the norm.  

I respect conservative opinion. I do not respect, or tolerate, sociopathy. We liberals need to be clear of the difference if liberalism is going to survive in America.

Update:  I have deleted the comments for this post because, typically, some righties were determined to leave flame bait and I got tired of deleting their comments.

To those of you whining about being censored -- my dears, this blog is my property. I pay for the bandwidth. Therefore, I control the content. And I choose to maintain a place where liberals can talk to each other in peace, without flamers or trolls or thread disrupters. There are plenty of other places you can go to bait lefties. So go there.

Sept. 30, 2004—Merck & Co., Inc. today announced a voluntary worldwide withdrawal of VIOXX^® (rofecoxib), its arthritis and acute pain medication. . . . there was an increased relative risk for confirmed cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, beginning after 18 months of treatment in the patients taking VIOXX compared to those taking placebo.

 

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Dec. 17, 2004--With a new study that indicates the nation's leading arthritis painkiller could raise the risk of heart attacks, the Food and Drug Administration advised doctors Friday to consider "alternative therapy" to Celebrex.

Earlier Friday, drug giant Pfizer Inc. said it had no plans to pull the painkiller off the market despite the data that showed patients using the drug in a long-term cancer study had increased cardiovascular risks.

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Dec. 21, 2004--U.S. health regulators are warning of heart risks connected to over-the-counter painkiller naproxen. The drug is sold as a generic and under several brand names, including Bayer's Aleve, and as Roche Palo Alto's Naprosyn.

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Dec. 24, 2004--It is impossible to ensure the safety of imported drugs purchased individually by American consumers, and even a federally run program of bulk importation would pose medical and economic risks to consumers, according to a highly anticipated and instantly controversial pair of reports released Tuesday by Bush administration officials.

Yeah, you don't know where those risky Canadian drugs come from -- unlike U.S. drugs from Merck, Pfizer, Bayer, Roche, etc. .... 

 

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The US state department has launched a $10m "Iraqi women's democracy initiative" to train Iraqi women in the skills and practices of democratic life ahead of the forthcoming elections. Paula Dobriansky, US undersecretary of state for global affairs, declared:"We will give Iraqi women the tools, information and experience they need to run for office and lobby for fair treatment." The fact that the money will go mainly to organisations embedded with the US administration, such as the Independent Women's Forum (IWF) founded by Dick Cheney's wife Lynn, was, of course, not mentioned.

Of all the blunders by the US administration in Iraq, the greatest is its failure to understand Iraqi people, women in particular. The main misconception is to perceive Iraqi women as silent, powerless victims in a male-controlled society in urgent need of "liberation". This image fits conveniently into the big picture of the Iraqi people being passive victims who would welcome the occupation of their country.

Lack of security and fear of kidnapping make Iraqi women prisoners in their own homes. They witness the looting of their country by Halliburton, Bechtel, US NGOs, missionaries, mercenaries and local subcontractors, while they are denied clean water and electricity. In the land of oil, they have to queue five hours a day to get kerosene or petrol. Acute malnutrition has doubled among children. Unemployment at 70% is exacerbating poverty, prostitution, backstreet abortion and honour killing. Corruption and nepotism are rampant in the interim government. Al-Naqib, minister of interior admitted that he had appointed 49 of his relatives to high-ranking jobs, but only because they were qualified.

What in the world is "Christian" about insisting on saying "Merry Christmas" to a devout Jew or Hindu who might reasonably view the statement as a sign of disrespect? At the level of government: Is it really "Christian" for a religious majority to press its advantage over religious minorities, including nonbelievers?

 

... The great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that "the chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men." I fear that in these Christmas debates, Christians are behaving not as Christians but as a tribe: "We will pound them if they get in the way of our customs and rituals."

Tribal behavior is antithetical to the spirit of peace and good will. In this season, we ought to be taking the most expansive possible view of our obligations to others.

Who is behind this attack? O'Reilly, the well-scrubbed seer, pointed to "secular progressives" with an evil agenda!

"Secular progressives realize that America as it is now will never approve of gay marriage, partial birth abortion, euthanasia, legalized drugs, income redistribution through taxation, and many other progressive visions because of religious opposition.

"But if the secularists can destroy religion in the public arena, the brave new progressive world is a possibility. That's what happened in Canada."

Canada!!!??? Oh, Thou vast wasteland of paganism. (I think they're in the midst of assembling an all-Druid hockey team. HEATHENS!)

The American culture of victimization needs and nurtures people and controversies like this. You're nobody in this country — the richest and among the freest in the history of the world — unless somebody is trying to oppress you. "I kvetch, therefore I am."

 

... Why are these allegations of a war against Christianity coming up now? Not only is there no such war on Christianity going on, the balance between minority accommodation of the majority culture and majority accommodation of minority sensitivities hasn't even shifted in favor of the minority.

The real explanation is close to the opposite: The majority is feeling its oats. Or, more accurately, a few would-be cultural commissars think this is the moment for the majority to feel its oats. It's part of the agenda coming out of the last election. They don't think they're losing the culture war. They think they're winning, and it's time to go on the offensive.

THE SINGLE most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over. ...

 

Christmas in America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption. A story of the Jewishness of Jesus might undercut the Christian theology of replacement.

Today the Roman empire is recalled mainly as a force for good -- those roads, language, laws, civic magnificence, "order" everywhere. The United States of America also understands itself as acting in the world with good intentions, aiming at order. "New world order," as George H.W. Bush put it.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. And that means that throughout the land, litigants are heading to court to wage war over crosses, crèches, and Christmas trees. In the meantime, those wishing to spread Christmas cheer in the public square are suddenly emboldened to use court orders to get it done.

A group of Germans are wanting to get rid of Santa saying he has become a symbol of the commercialisation of Christmas.

Thousands of stickers have been printed declaring whole areas in Germany and Austria "Santa Free Zones" and pamphlets have been handed out on street corners reminding people that the traditional bringer of presents is St Nicholas and not the red-suited, white-bearded immigrant from the English-speaking world.

In some towns like the east Austrian town of St Wolfgang, Santa has even been banned from the local Christmas market - and shop keepers are restricted to offering traditional Austrian products and gifts as well as typical Austrian culinary delights.

Spokesman Bettina Schade from the Frankfurter Nicholas Initiative said: "We object to the material things, the hectic rush to buy gifts, and the ubiquity of the bearded man in the red suit that are taking away from the core meaning of Christmas.

"The Christian origins of Christmas, like the birth of Jesus, have receded into the background. It's becoming more and more a festival that is reduced to simply worldly gifts and commerce."

Local tourism manager in St Wolfgang Hans Wieser said: "Santa Claus is not a typical Christmas tradition neither in Germany nor Austria - this red-suited man only turned up over the last decade or so.

Well, first, let me say that I was disappointed that the nomination of Bernard Kerik didn't go forward. In retrospect, he made the right decision to pull his name down. He made the decision. There was a -- when the process gets going, our counsel asks a lot of questions and a prospective nominee listens to the questions and answers them and takes a look at what we feel is necessary to be cleared before the FBI check and before the hearings take place on the Hill.

And Bernard Kerik, after answering questions and thinking about the questions, decided to pull his name down. I think he would have done a fine job as the Secretary of Homeland Security, and I appreciate his service to our country.

We've vetted a lot of people in this administration. We vetted people in the first, we're vetting people in the second term, and I've got great confidence in our vetting process. And so the lessons learned is, continue to vet and ask good questions and get these candidates, the prospective nominees, to understand what we expect a candidate will face during a background check -- FBI background check, as well as congressional hearings.

Now, in terms of the NDI -- DNI, I'm going to find someone that knows something about intelligence, and capable and honest and ready to do the job. And I will let you know at the appropriate time when I find such a person.

Is he saying that he nominated Kerik before he was vetted? It's hard to tell what he's saying, exactly, but that's what he seems to be saying.

So it's official: The new gauntlet-throwing catch phrase from the right is "Merry Christmas" (can't you just see Eastwood saying it from behind the barrel of a gun?). Apparently, uttered in the right context—like on Fox News—those four syllables no longer convey simply holiday cheer, but a red-state/blue-state, my-god-is-better-than-yours challenge: I've got your "happy holidays" right here, buddy. This trend has been emerging all over the television dial: Last week on Scarborough Country, there was Pat Buchanan's distinctly testy-sounding "Merry Christmas" in answer to a guest from the American Atheists association who wished him a happy "winter solstice." And this week, there was George W. Bush's brief speech at the end of the Christmas in Washington variety special. (Throughout which I waited in vain for one politically correct, non-Christian number: Mandy Patinkin doing "Dreidl, Dreidl"? Queen Latifah rapping about Kwanzaa? C'mon, TNT, other religions can be cheesy too!) When the performances were through, Bush took the stage to thank the singers (who included LeAnn Rimes, American Idol 's Ruben Studdard, and the teen pop star JoJo) and remind the nation that the purpose of the season was to "remember the humble birth of our savior." Right, and to reach out to Americans of all faiths, in our country's great tradition of separation of church and … ? Mr. President? Are you finished already?

Yet if you watch the news and listen to certain politicians, especially since Election Day, you'll hear an ever-growing drumbeat that Christianity is under siege in America. Like Mr. Gibson, the international movie star who portrayed himself as a powerless martyr to a shadowy anti- Christian conspiracy in the run-up to the release of "The Passion," his fellow travelers on the right detect a sinister plot — of secularists, "secular Jews" and "elites" — out to destroy the religion followed by more than four out of every five Americans.

... The only evidence of what Pat Buchanan has called Christmas-season "hate crimes against Christianity" consists of a few ridiculous and isolated incidents, like the banishment of a religious float from a parade in Denver and of religious songs from a high school band concert in New Jersey. (In scale, this is nothing compared with the refusal of the world's largest retailer, Wal- Mart, to stock George Carlin's new best seller, "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?," whose cover depicts its author at the Last Supper.) Yet the hysteria is being pumped up daily by Fox News, newspapers like The New York Post and The Washington Times, and Web sites like savemerrychristmas.org. Mr. O'Reilly and Jerry Falwell have gone so far as to name Michael Bloomberg an anti-Christmas conspirator because the mayor referred to the Christmas tree as a "holiday tree" in the lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center.

What is this about? How can those in this country's overwhelming religious majority maintain that they are victims in a fiery battle with forces of darkness? It is certainly not about actual victimization. Christmas is as pervasive as it has ever been in America, where it wasn't even declared a federal holiday until after the Civil War. What's really going on here is yet another example of a post-Election-Day winner-takes-all power grab by the "moral values" brigade. As Mr. Gibson shrewdly contrived his own crucifixion all the way to the bank, trumping up nonexistent threats to his movie to hype it, so the creation of imagined enemies and exaggerated threats to Christianity by "moral values" mongers of the right has its own secular purpose. The idea is to intimidate and marginalize anyone who objects to their efforts to impose the most conservative of Christian dogma on public policy. If you're against their views, you don't have a differing opinion — you're anti-Christian (even if you are a Christian). 

Still, some reject -- despise your name

With such intensity;

In spite, they celebrate instead,

Their Secularity.