I agree fully and completely.

One’s position on the Iraqi invasion is a litmus test as far as I’m concerned. It was so obviously a stupid thing from every possible angle that there can be no wiggle room.

Idiots and opportunists supported this invasion, their opinions on other issues notwithstanding.

Ouch. Kristof?

Obviously, I use ‘fucking’ a lot when I’m pissed.

Again, I’m not pissed at Brad whose forgiveness comes from decency but at a particular strain of Liberalism. Seriously, I’m more angry and depressed about the state of politics than I’ve been since 2003. I see the future and it looks like 1999. A cult of personality surrounding a charismatic serial triangulator and abetted by ‘liberals’ in the press.

I for one do not welcome our Obamaite, Sensible Liberal overlords.

Well, I think Yglesias gets to have his war fuck up, but never again. That being said, he’s really not going towards being a policy wonk, he’s going towards punditude 2.0, and who the fuck wants that? I’m not sure someone posting 20 times a day attempting to have an opinion professionally on the news of the day, whose opinions are dictated by the news of the day, rather than sharpening focus on actual things that matter is not really useful. I mean, yes we are forced to react to utter and complete bullshit, but this just means we are part of the same machine we despise. Look at Ezra Klein- his entire deal is supposed to be health care policy and he completely fucked up Bush’s health plan. I just don’t know if budding pundits can ever be useful. Arguments from linkage I could not begin to care about. I feel like I get your point, though. The larger point is that this is a pre-destined event. The game players continue to play the game. They were never really on the outside, all of their blogs have really only been interneships in pundit 2.0. I note that Digby has not been hired by anyone. This may or may not suggest anything, Digby may have a day job.

Bull, Retardo. Linking to Tbogg, Edroso, and (dare I say it) Sadly, No! is a terrible litmus test for leftwingism.

You lot are core of the liberal Internet peanut gallery. You’re funny, angry, sarcastic bloggers. But you don’t actually add much information to the debate. It’s not your role. Except, of course, in episodes of the Great Gazoogle.

Yglesias is a wannabe wonk. That’s why he links to other wonks. Have you considered that maybe he just doesn’t share your sense of humor? It’s not a crime.

You know what is a crime? Josh Marshall trying to be funny. Oy.

Hear fucking hear.

What TJ said.

Balls to you, daddy. Yglesias is 30+ years younger than Brad DeLong, and most of your criticisms would simply exclude most people of his age and millieu. You need to remember what the blogosphere was like in 2002, especially for a naive 20-year-old. In the last 3 years, he has become simply the best foreign policy writer in or out of the blogosphere, hilarious typos notwithstanding, and the idea that he’s some sort of Colmes-y milquetoast is baseless and silly. And a blog that goes out of its way to dig up and criticize the most obscure wingnuts in existence should hesitate before knocking someone else for actually taking on the big names.

There’s a magazine called “The Atlantic” or something to that effect? Who knew!

I got linked by him? He must have had an RSS feed going for “Etan Thomas” or “Gheorghe Muresan.”

Yup, we’d all like to see, for example, digby throwing down lighting bolts from where David Brooks now sits. But whaddayasay we wait for Matt to, I dunno, write one column for the Atlantic before we start saying what he will or won’t do there.

Couple o’things, m’man Mencken. First, Lieberman has flushed his political career and respectability behind the Iraq war. I might be wrong, but I believe he’s been pretty good on most of the left’s pet domestic issues. He’s a traitor, not to an ideology, but to his country. He’s not a Neocon, he’s a Likudnik. Sure, they’re very similar, but he’s willing to risk the well being of his nation, it’s young people and it’s treasury to carry out the aggressive and foul foreign policy of ANOTHER NATION! I don’t have a problem with Lieberman’s politics. I have a problem with his national identity.

Second, your premise felt wrong to me because while I was desparately, frantically against the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it was not on a neat set of liberal political values, but rather this. My experience has taught me two things. First, the worst kind of criminals start wars, particularly by invading nations that are not attacking them (see nazi germany). And second, nations that go to war for lousy reasons run the risk of coming out the worse for the experience (see vietnam).

I guess the point is that to make a decision about someone’s ideology strictly on the basis of where they stood on one foreign policy decision in 2003 is going to increasingly leave you with a variety of critters, some you like and some you’ll need to call terminix to get rid of…

mikey

Oh, damn. Yglesias was an invasion supporter? I’m not paying enough attention to the world of the Internets.

Ok, The Atlantic is still a haven for psuedo-intellectual, bloodthirsty, know-it-all, know-nothings (except Yglesias).

Hey, it’s not like he cares what us dums-dums think. Gotta fight the power…..and all that crap.

Please god, don’t make Yglesias be the straight, liberal version of Sully.

I don’t pretend to know nothin’ about nothin’, but seems to me that this might be analogous to what often has to happen in the tech world – the super-geeks (who actually know what the fuck they are doing) hate the people who sign the checks (who generally don’t), and vice versa. A buffer layer is formed to turn super-geek reality into weasel words for the suits, and then take the suit’s lies and turn them into… well, they’re still lies, but at least the buffer people can shrug and blame the people upstairs when the geeks rant at them.

So I says, good on ya, Big Media Matt, in your entry into the world of middle management whoredom!

Yglesias is 30+ years younger than Brad DeLong, and most of your criticisms would simply exclude most people of his age and millieu. You need to remember what the blogosphere was like in 2002, especially for a naive 20-year-old.

Why is this an excuse? Youth doesn’t mitigate the stupidity of any opinion. Explain, maybe, but not excuse. And it’s not just the war: look up Yglesias on trade issues or Left Populism.

Arguments from linkage I could not begin to care about. I feel like I get your point, though. The larger point is that this is a pre-destined event. The game players continue to play the game. They were never really on the outside, all of their blogs have really only been interneships in pundit 2.0. I note that Digby has not been hired by anyone. This may or may not suggest anything, Digby may have a day job.

I don’t think Digby does, but thanks for mentioning the name: Digby does wonkery better than Matt. That takes care of the humor dodge.

First, the worst kind of criminals start wars, particularly by invading nations that are not attacking them (see nazi germany). And second, nations that go to war for lousy reasons run the risk of coming out the worse for the experience (see vietnam).

Those are Leftist values, Mikey. In contrast, interventionist ‘Liberal’ values are only Leftist in a Trotskyite sense. Sensible Liberals like Yglesias, painfully naive, simply had insufficient purchase of American history (‘oooh, war! Kosovo and WWII were good wars! Let’s do Iraq!’), and terrible political and personal judgement (‘They stole the 2000 election but claim Saddam has WMDs! Let’s believe them!’).

Hmm. Basically, yes. If you fell for Iraq, fuck you, at least as far as being paid to tell people what you think. Even tho I loathe the true believers less than than the ass-covering shites like every Dem but Russ* they’re both Neville fuckin Chamberlain. If someone fell for the case for invasion of Iraq they’re either gullible or easily manipulated, if there’s really a difference. I’m not an aspiring pundit and hope never to be, but I never fell for that sales pitch for a minute. I still can’t understand why people did, and I have good friends who were suckered in, people who are not latent bloodthirsty bastards. On the other hand, I wouldn’t turn to them for political insight. They tend to be the people who ignored politics in the 90s and care now because they’re not blind.
* – At least the true believers are honest. Fuck them for what they believe, but they didn’t vote to kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands needlessly out of political necessity.

You said it, Mencken. Yglesias is sucking hard on that Sensible Centrist teat, and setting himself up for the big “I didn’t leave the Left, the Left left me!” announcement a few years down the road. That’s why I’m a Kleinite instead of an Yglesiast.

I like Digby, and I like D r i f t g l a s s too.

As for:

Do my comrades really think that the Left’s condition is so dire that we should be happy when any Johnny-come-lately doofus now spouting our talking points is allowed near an ‘MSM’ job?

I’m undecided there, Mr. HTML. I remember well the ’80s, when a flock of corrupt cowards managed to escape their just desserts and reappear to afflict us again. Are we really going to get these bastards, caught red handed yet again, by kicking out converts to our cause? It isn’t like the MSM is going to listen to us and hire more dirty fucking hippies. (That is, if they’ve hired any?)

Yglesias

The guy’s got a fucking Y at the start of his name, and we can still make fun of the crotch-lettered yahoos as far as I know. You other fucking Y-starting nimrods can bite me and go back to Y-land in your yachts and fucking yo-yo up a storm.

I support Obama, partly because he opposed the war. Politically speaking, I’ll be his nappy-headed Ho…

Fuck this shit. I’m not saying that Yglesias’s youth is an excuse, only a premise for forgiveness, which he’s earned since his misjudgement on Iraq. And attitudes like this:

I see the future and it looks like 1999. A cult of personality surrounding a charismatic serial triangulator and abetted by ‘liberals’ in the press.

were the basis of the Nader 2000 campaign — how’d that work out? Seriously, you guys have “heightening the contradictions” so long that it’s the only game you can play anymore, and now that the contradictions have pretty much hit their peak, you’re trying to push them further instead of actually cashing in.

I for one do not welcome our Obamaite, Sensible Liberal overlords.

I tend to agree, but even the bloggers you respect as proper lefties aren’t really supporting anyone left of Obama for the nomination. Sawicky has done good work defending Kucinich from Kos, but off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone openly advocating for Kucinich. I don’t think anyone at SN has expressed strong support for any candidate.

I might be wrong, but I believe [Lieberman]’s been pretty good on most of the left’s pet domestic issues.

I see this a lot, but I never really see anything backing it up. On what progressive issue has Lieberman shown leadership? Pork projects for Connecticut don’t count, no matter how happy they made the local lefties, because everyone in Congress does that.

Hear hear!

It’s only a short ride to the next hospital – Rape Gurney Joe.

“I think we can afford to be more choosy”

Sure.
Especially since “we” are not signing any of the checks for major publications. Or, for the most part, for subscriptions to said publications.
Which means that our opinions means pretty much exactly “bupkis” in terms of determining who writes for those publications.

I’m not being flippant, here, and I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing.

“They need to spend a long time in the journalistic wilderness before they again deserve serious attention.”

And, again, sure. Sadly, this also does mean that “we” are going to – continue to – do more or less exactly nothing to determine who actually does receive serious attention, beyond our blogrolls and RSS feeds. And, unfortunately, there aren’t that many of us.

Matt’s been stupidly wrong about some very easy things, due to youth and a generally myopic worldview. He’s at least had the sense to realize it. And he’s not Hitchens or Sully or even, yet, Joe Klein. Yglesias is more than a marginal improvement towards some kind of sense than someone Andrew “Fifth Column” Sullivan

Do you need to read him? Of course not. But you didn’t read The Atlantic anyways, just like a 52-year-old vaguely liberalish doctor in Bethesda wasn’t going to read alicublog, anyways. So if he reads columns by Yglesias rather than Hitchens, Sullivan or Klein – that’s a good thing. Even if it’s not the best of all possible worlds… which will be coming into being just about when the Cranky Real Leftists bloggers’ syndicate leverages a hostile takeover of the Tribune Company.

You know, I honestly didn’t realize HTML Mencken and Retardo Montalban were one and the same. I guess I should have figured it out by the fact that both of them are very bad at writing posts at sadlyno.com. Seriously, they’re both 0-for-infinity.

And my serious comment boils down to this: if we refuse to forgive those who were wrong about the war (or anything) and acknowledge it, then we’re not a political movement, we’re a hermetic order.

Do my comrades really think that the Left’s condition is so dire that we should be happy when any Johnny-come-lately doofus now spouting our talking points is allowed near an ‘MSM’ job?

Maybe “happy” isn’t the right word, but… yes. It’s really fucking dire. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that Ann Althouse just spent a month writing for the New York Times, as a liberal.

Maybe he’ll help, maybe he won’t, maybe he’ll turn to the dark side. More so, I mean. Any of those outcomes aren’t worse than the current situation. I’m gonna be optimistic, for now.

has begun to gall me more because it comes from allies

Come off it, Retardo, we all know damned well that you don’t consider any part of the center left your “ally.” In fact, if one were to go back through your posts and do the tedious tallying of targets, I’m confident we’d find almost as many attacks against the center left as against the far right.

You’ve got a far-left agenda, and you want to see other people with far-left agendas installed as mouthpieces in media outlets that have not yet been marginalized due to their consistent advocacy of far-left views (e.g. The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive).

Go ahead and bitch when someone who isn’t a far-leftist gets a job at a magazine that isn’t the sort of propaganda outlet you’d prefer it to be, but don’t think your thirst for power doesn’t shine through every bitter little word, and look every bit as ugly as power-lust on the far right.

dont be a dick grampaw

You’ve got a far-left agenda

What’s on the far left’s agenda grampaw? We know trade’s a big deal, but what else?

It’s an insidiously manipulative and all too typical psychological ploy. The people who once gave Bush the nod to invade Iraq are proposing we forgive and forget because they want to be forgiven for having supported him.

That’s getting off too easy.

Who are any of us to forgive these shitholes, anyway? We’re not one of the dead, the wounded, the tortured.

Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the right to forgive assholes who commit grievous harm to other people.

I haven’t read this dude, but anyone who a) supported Bush on ANYTHING and b) supported and promoted the invasion of Iraq (this wasn’t a war “with” but a takeover, pure and simple), is an imbecile and an accessory. They’re going to have to live with that.

This post roxxorz. Right on every count.

The keerazy political spectrum rears its ugly head again. I am not an extremist. I am quite moderate. I’m am not far-anything. I consider eco-terrorists and violent PETA people extreme leftists, so I don’t know what this grampaw guy is talking about. He shows up quite a bit a pretends to be some sort of Brad Delong-style wonk. He sounds more like Kaus.

“Thirst for power”? Ha, your conservative is showing.

The people who once gave Bush the nod to invade Iraq are proposing we forgive and forget because they want to be forgiven for having supported him.

First, not that you were addressing me, but I was against the war from the beginning, too.

Second, no one said “forget,” except for Mencken in his straw man up at the top there. I do believe that being wrong about the war should be remembered and held against you, especially if you want to be a pundit or a politician.

But I do believe it’s reasonable to forgive, with reservations, those who were wrong about the war, admit it, and pledge to be more careful in the future. If we don’t let people do that, then some of our favorite darlings (Al Franken, anyone?) can never be listened to again, even though they are eloquently right most of the time, and even though they are valuable to our cause. And we basically have to tar Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton, and those who supported them, as monsters because they all waged bad wars. Are we going to elect someone who’s lefter than them anytime soon?

I haven’t read this dude

No fucking kidding!

I appreciate your points HTML, lots of people should have hig profile journalism jobs. Hilzoy for one, in addition to Digby, Roy, and plenty of others. Why doesn’t David Sirota or Dave Neiwart have a bigger podium? But to pick on Matt… it just doesn’t add up.

and I know that this was just a rant, and not a researched post, but you really really should have included *some* links to Matt, if you are going to go with: any Johnny-come-lately doofus now spouting our talking points or the stupid fucking idiots who got it wrong (and often, not only got it wrong, but concentrated on attacking those who got it right

I mean, come on.

“You’ve got a far-left agenda…………….”,… zzzzzzz

grampaw, you are Hugh Hewwit, and I claim my $5……..

Ok, here’s my serious question. They sold this war through a bunch of respected outlets including NYT. They had lots of journalists who were genuinely complicit in selling the con. But that’s the point. It WAS a con. Hell, I believed Iraq had Nerve agents, I just didn’t consider them a threat to anyone. But here’s the thing. If you weren’t complicit, but merely bought the con, why can’t you be forgiven now? I mean, they did EVERYTHING they could to sell this thing, and I know people who started out skeptical but came to believe due to the comprehensive and effective sell job.

Are old ladies guilty because some fake roofer bilks them out of their savings? If you fall for a con, if you are the victim of lies and manipulation, shouldn’t there be some kind of forgiveness.

I have no idea if this accurately describes MY or not, but it’s at least conceivable…

mikey

But I do believe it’s reasonable to forgive, with reservations, those who were wrong about the war, admit it, and pledge to be more careful in the future.

Yeah, I agree with this. Mencken sounds pretty pissed. In my head, I just check off “supported invasion” next to “Matthew Yglesias”. Next subject. No point in shunning him. Just keep on keeping on.

American liberals circa 2007 are individualistic anti-authoritarians. We can fight back by informing regular people about what the wingnuts and their enablers really think. We have to warn the general public (er, or people you know, spread the word) to be wary of authoritarians and strongman leaders who vow to crush the Enemy by breaking the law and taking a big ole steamy shit on the American Constitution.

A lot of us were led around by the nose by prevailing wisdom, we had no idea we would get fucked so hard. I think Prof. Booty recognizes this in an especially personal way. I would suggest that maybe HTML really means that Yglesias going to the Atlantic is basically meaningless, and that maybe the big Y is kind of a certified player of the game. I think I would be especially nervous about the pundit from the age of 20 type- perhaps it just gets into their blood. Compare Matt to hilzoy or somebody older that comes from a background of actual experience not just informed or pseudo-informed opinion. This isn’t to knock Matt, but I’m not clear that he’s just not headed down the road of being the next Begala, or perhaps Colmes. Perhaps there is a point to be made about joining a ridiculously corrupt system (our mediocracy). Does Y just legitimize all the bullshit that has come out of the Atlantic? Who knows.

tomemos,

I wouldn’t say Retardo/HTML is zero for infinity.

He’s at least one Jeff Goldstein Paste Eating Wadded Sanitary Product rant for infinity.

Do I get to say “hot brown sugar tight thighed Jersey girl” or do I still get fired ?

What if I say I want to bone Maya Angelou hard and deep while she’s wearing legwarmers and we’re discussing W.E.B. Dubois ?

Howbout that ?

Speaking probably only for myself, I don’t think the question is forgiveness. Of course you can forgive someone for having been wrong. I have, I’m sure we all have, if only yourself. People make mistakes, and the admin and their sales team are the only ones who don’t deserve at least the chance for forgiveness.
But as far as being taken seriously as a pundit, as a voice of wisdom…. no, sorry, no. It was, in a sense, a test of ability. If a reporter/pundit/etc lacked the capacity to see through the very obvious con job at work, then I have to question their basic competence at their job.
And, sadly, that’s not an uncommon question.

A Different Brad —

You said it perfectly.

Thank you.

Yglesias has the excuse for being 20-something, the rest of them don’t even have that.

I mean, they did EVERYTHING they could to sell this thing, and I know people who started out skeptical but came to believe due to the comprehensive and effective sell job.

Are old ladies guilty because some fake roofer bilks them out of their savings? If you fall for a con, if you are the victim of lies and manipulation, shouldn’t there be some kind of forgiveness.

Well, er, Mikey, maybe this proves how insular the US is, because Canadians, by and large, didn’t believe the WMD fairy tale from the get go, and we were highly suspicious of Bush anyway. We believed Hans Blix and the UN inspector reports. Blix fought the lies every step of the way. I dare say, most of the world, until that security council briefing by Powell showing the phony aerial photographs were unconvinced that Iraq was an Al Quaeda accomplice and intended the US grievous harm.

So no, I’m sorry but I can’t equate the US with an old lady on her last mental leg being bilked by a conjobber.

P.S. We couldn’t believe that cretin got elected in 2000!

He sounds more like Kaus.

Oh no you di’unt!

Fuck this shit. I’m not saying that Yglesias’s youth is an excuse, only a premise for forgiveness, which he’s earned since his misjudgement on Iraq. And attitudes like this:

were the basis of the Nader 2000 campaign — how’d that work out?

Yeah, well fuck you. For one, I didn’t vote for Nader in 2000. For another, Nader is used as a scapegoat for people who don’t have the balls to say a) Bush *stole* the election and b) Al Gore was too chickenshit to say, if not ‘Tilden or Blood’ at least, ‘I will not abide’.

grampaw, you are Hugh Hewwit, and I claim my $5……

This is not only true of Grampaw but inspiredly true. HH’s trademark self-identification of ‘center-right’ is just as Overton Window-flappy dishonest as Grampaw’s self-identification as a liberal. They’re both full of shit and consciously so.

for me, the last remnants of respect for yglesias went out the window with this post:

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/07/go_bush_go.html

a different brad, that’s certainly a fair viewpoint, and one I respect and understand even if I don’t share it. (I’m sure you’re relieved.) If that was the blog post, there’d be little argument. Saying that Yglesias has failed a test of discernment and skepticism is miles above Mencken calling him “bovine” and saying that “his first instinct is accomodation with the Right.”

By the way, Mencken, “accommodation” has two m’s. Tell us again about Yglesias’s spelling?

I do believe it’s reasonable to forgive, with reservations, those who were wrong about the war, admit it, and pledge to be more careful in the future.

I do agree with this, but I tell ya, when it comes to Bush it’s a hard sell.

If someone comes right out and admits they were an absolute fool and dead wrong about Bush, I can forgive that.

But if it’s the old hang dog ploy, qualified with a whole lot of rationalizations and excuses (now that Bush isn’t so popular), forgeeeeeet it.

The fact of the matter is, the Left-center-left-not-Republican wing of the country can’t simply excommunicate everyone who was wrong about the war. It’s not just a matter of the “right about the war” team not being that big – it’s that we don’t hold the power to make the people who were wrong about the war, go away. Not even in what amounts to our party. We’ve made (some) progress on that front, but the media is a far tougher nut to crack, especially given the still-pervasive No Liberals on the Teevee rule. And the whole Weapons Manufacturers Run the Teevee thing, too.

What’s to prevent it from happening all over again if people aren’t made to take responsibility for their wrongheadedness?

Despite the early rah rah pro-war group think, a few Dems had the courage to stand against the invasion and they were called traitors and wimps. I wonder how charitable they are feeling?

for me, the last remnants of respect for yglesias went out the window with this post:

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/07/go_bush_go.html

egads, Sanitas; the person who said “no shit!” in response to my having said I hadn’t read Ygregious, can eat it. Waddanasshole.

Ouch, indeed.

But I agree with you.

The real question in this case involves considering Matt’s personal deal. Way harder.

Would you or would you not take the big (OK, reliable) bank to spout you point of view?

I, for one, hope so.

I’m not sure why the obama grumpiness. Are folks really getting stars in their eyes, or is it just a hint of intoxication at the idea of a vaguely progressive canididate/prez? If he ends up really triangulating and leaving no base for proper follow-up that’ll be bad, obviously. But, as far as anyone seems to know so far, Obama isn’t obsessed with his own penis. That’s a good start.

Through an odd sequence of events, I currently receive copies of The Atlantic, printed on that costly shiny paper of theirs, in the mail. For a guy who gets paid by the hour, it’s very, very interesting! It’s like a magazine written by smart fellows for the general public, except I’m not there so far as that magazine’s editors are concerned. Me or about 250,000,000 or so other Americans, we’re not rich enough.

It’s not that we are in different classes or parties or neighborhoods than The Atlantic’s target audience; we simply don’t exist at all. Imagine America purged clean of even the memory the working class; that’s The Atlantic’s America. It lends a weird warp to the way they look at some things, like for example, in their coverage of the Iraq war, U.S. soldiers; pretty much, they can only perceive officers.

So for me reading The Atlantic is like being a ghost at a nice party, looking at the wackos wandering around and talking kind of crazy, drinks in their hands. Occasionally they wave their arms right through me. I’m sure Yglesias will vastly improve the tone and sense of that strange party. In my ghostly way, I wish him the best of luck in there.

ouch. do you think he’ll able to take a dump out of that new one you just ripped him?

but i agree… there is a wealth of writers/policy wonks out there that deserve a bigger mouthpiece… but if that mouthpiece is the atlantic, you’d need a lot of lysol to clean the smeary excretions of its other writers, so i don’t see why señor mencken throws such a fit. it’s not like Yglesias is writing for counterpunch, or the new left review. so he can keep his new job, and i’ll keep ignoring the links he gets from other people in the blogviosphere i do respect…

and what’s with all the “don’t fuck with brad, man, i gots his back!” shit? you wanna do him or something? sheesh, what lame bravado… the reverend of bradistan can take of himself, he’s a big blogger. that whole “you’ll have to go through me to get to him” schtick is just belittling his mad rhetorical skillz… and it makes you sound gay… not in a “that’s cool, you smoke pole and dance really well” kinds of gay; in the chipper, happy, naive old-timer “thats grand! that’s swell!” kinds of way…

and I know that this was just a rant, and not a researched post, but you really really should have included *some* links to Matt, if you are going to go with: any Johnny-come-lately doofus now spouting our talking points or the stupid fucking idiots who got it wrong (and often, not only got it wrong, but concentrated on attacking those who got it right

I mean, come on.

Kathleen:

Yglesias’s original site is dead. I can’t link to his pro war posts. But if you want evidence of his stupidity, I’ll try to be helpful:

Guh

Just like Grampaw!

Duh

OH yes

Dumb

Of course

See?

As I said, terrible political judgement

And someone mentioned Kaus…

Guh

TNR = Kos?

Admittedly self-righteous

Colmesish

Exactly

‘Objectively pro-Saddam’ — those were the days, huh?

Oh, right. Bingo.

Ugh

It was *always stupid*; it’s pathetic when you have to wait for Zbig to get completely unhinged to agree with what truly sensible people knew was an obvious truth.

Hah

That’s the attitude.

Tom Friedman, mirror, yes

Blargh

Sure, right

Hahahaha Number One!

Admit it and *leave*

Well, I agree with the spirit of this post. It’s a watered down Leftist world.

Retardo/HTML, you are the best. Just wish you wouldn’t keep us waiting so long between posts.

But if you want evidence of his stupidity, I’ll try to be helpful:

That was helpful. I kind of like the RSS feed better for it because it doesn’t do line-breaks.

No one gives a shit what I think, and that’s as it should be. But for the record, I don’t think in terms of “forgiveness”, I just think that if you were stupid enough and/or wilfully blind enough to believe the Bush administration’s justifications for invading Iraq then you automatically go to the back of the line as far as ‘credible pundit’ employment. Sure, I’ll read Yglesias from time to time, if I wish, but I’ll never trust his intelligence again.

By the way, Mencken, “accommodation� has two m’s. Tell us again about Yglesias’s spelling?

I already admitted that I suck as a writer. Got that caveat out of the way so criticisms like yours would seem even more lame. In retrospect, you didn’t need the help.

If we don’t let people do that, then some of our favorite darlings (Al Franken, anyone?)…

Fuck that Clintonite bastard. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

I think it’s funny that grampaw thinks that The Nation is “far left,” as is Mother Jones. They’re both liberal rags, and no further. The Nation’s most leftist writer is Alexander Cockburn, and even he’s always been kind of out of place.

By any reasonable, historical, and international standards, HTML Mencken here is a left populist, not a far leftist. He is easily within the realm covered by The Nation, Mother Jones, Adbusters, etc., none of which are even remotely close to far left.

Honestly, the only far left journal that has any circulation in the US is Z Magazine, and it’s kind of a muddle of anarchist/syndicalist/Marxist stuff. Mostly Chomskyish stuff, not really my preference.

Lesley:

I never read MY either – but I did read that link. What an Archie Bunker, John Tierney fuckup of a post that was…..

we can always count on Retardo to get his dander up over sensible centrists – I think he just wants ideological purity and I respect him for that – as to wanting power? grampaw is being completely disingenuous almost so much that i think he is Retardo’s dead dixiecrat grampaw come to life as a sockpuppet…

slightly OT: fuck Lieberman he’s no centrist of any stripe he is a Likudnik

HTML has a point, a good point.

But remembering back to 2003, or 1999, I don’t seem to recall ANY liberal voices in the media, by and large; Sensible or otherwise. I’ll take a sensible liberal over another from the Regnery farm club like DoughBob Pantload, or The Virgin Ben.

And even though I largely suspect that I agree with H more often than not on the Leftist spectrum of things, I gotta say: the last time we had a Sensible Liberal leading things, centrist and triangulating as he may have been, it was a damn sight better than the half bright corporate power whore currently destroying much of civilization.

Just sayin, man, given the choice, I’d have Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Peart running things. But if I can’t have that, I’ll cheer the incremental changes that we can get.

Driftglass, BTW, can give the Atlantic a pass. He gets Limbaugh’s fucking chair when we pry that lard ass out of it.

grampaw’s been hauling the hard-right line for so long that everything looks left to him now.

Author David Halberstam Dies in Crash

In 1964, at age 30, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam.

He later said he initially supported the U.S. action there but became disillusioned. That disillusionment was apparent in Halberstam’s 1972 best-seller, “The Best and the Brightest,” a critical account of U.S. involvement in the region.

the last time we had a Sensible Liberal leading things, centrist and triangulating as he may have been, it was a damn sight better than the half bright corporate power whore

Clinton was an intelligent power whore.

Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Peart running things.

I never thought to put The Trees next to Harrison Bergeron.

Right on, Mencken. The long list of links you posted above are pretty damning, and the one Sanitas posted is most galling of all. But the reason I removed Yglesias from my bookmarks a couple of years back was more petty: it came when I read his third post in a week that started along the lines of, “When I was a philosophy major at Harvard [i.e., 3 weeks ago], Professor Wankharder used to say…” When you feel the need to constantly remind your readers that you went to Harvard, you’re obviously compensating for something…

As far as the links issue goes, the point isn’t that MY never links to HTMLM’s favorite bloggers; the point is that MY never refers to leftist thinkers at all except to distinguish himself from the dirty hippies–the “pro-Saddam rally,” as he puts it in one of the inane posts Mencken pointed us to–and thus make himself sound like the voice of reason and common sense. What a wanker…

Um, I like Matt and I’m a cubs fan, I’ve never thought of them as being related before.

Anyway, see what happens over there with him. I think he’ll get canned in short order. He doesn’t fit in there, The Atlantic has been the house organ of liberal zionism since the 40’s and I don’t think they know what they got.

But incremental progress still means lesser lights get the chances that folk like digby n tbogg n Dave Neiwert n teh rude pundit should get. If a liberal voice is gonna get a chance I’d prefer it were one of our heavy hitters, not an otherwise bright enough fellow who was wrong about the most important issue of our time.
MY is eventually either going to be assimilated or fired for retaining a hint of attitude after they’ve all been over to each other’s homes for dinner and drinks.

There’s a great deal here I am not qualified to comment on.

There’s actually much I don’t know.

I know we, as a people, are bleeding.

I know our leadership is beyond corrupt, and will continue to shred the constitution and lie to the people in order to advance their authoritarian fever dreams.

I know if we don’t stop them in this cycle, everything we ever dreamed about will be lost.

I know that people, real people, real flesh and fucking blood people are dying and suffering because of the heartless criminals in Washington.

I know that any voice. Got that? ANY VOICE. That speaks out against their criminal actions and the destruction of representative democracy, such as it is, in America is a voice I want heard.

I know we are losing. They have 30% of the popular, and WE’RE losing? Why is that? Could it be because the game is rigged and the voices we need to hear aren’t being heard?

Might (just maybe, think about it) we be a little tiny bit better off with Yglesias writing for the Atlantic than maybe somebody else?

What do you guys want? Do you want to try to get back to a more benign technocracy or do you want to split into little groups and let the organized theocratic authoritarian right have their way?

Learn to fight or learn to surrender.

mikey

Does Y just legitimize all the bullshit that has come out of the Atlantic? Who knows.

See, that’s how the game is played. Rightwing/Conservatism isn’t selling like it used to. So sex it up a bit with some “liberals” and see if it’ll sell. The catch is that they only hire left centrists to fill the “leftwing” spot. In a sense, they’re the only “approved” lefties allowed to comment on anything – pundit shows, op-eds, etc, any time they need a “lefty” stand-in as a prop to provide “balance” and/or the appearance of legitimacy. Anyone to left of center is seen an extremist. Will people who’ve read him online read the Atlantic Monthly? It’s possible. And they’re probably hoping to get a few more converts in the process.

That’s the point mikey.

Yglesias is in place at the Atlantic. Now let’s fight to put digby in Time. And Hilzoy in the NYTimes. and driftglass on the radio.

step by painful step, we can drag the discourse out of the far right fever swamp it has been mired in since Reagan was Presnit.

and maybe, just maybe, along the way we can get a little more justice for someone other than corporations, we can save a few more poor kids in Missouri, we can educate a few more people and keep condomania from swallowing a few more acres of greenfields….

First of all, I’ll just get this out there, at the risk of surrendering my credibility before I’ve actually posted anything…I’m more or less a libertarian. Not the fucking fake Glenn Reynolds-type and not some doctrinaire Cato-type. But I have always hated this administration and hated this war. Passionately. Hate 99% of the right and truely believe anything remotely connected to conservatism anymore, in this country, is diseased and deeply flawed.

Yglesias, though? Yeah, Iraq is a pretty serious fuck-up, but he seems pretty rational to me. Do I always agree with him…no. But he seems to, ya know, put forth an argument, back it up with facts and stuff. Which is to say it seems like you could have a reasonable discussion with him. That sure makes him better than any MSM pundit.

I wouldn’t expect everyone to be a fan, but I don’t get the vitriol. There is too much at stake. Perhaps when we get out of Iraq, stop torturing people, get habeus back, reform prison sentencing, reel in the executive breanch, beat-back the fake Christians, get some reasonable form of gun control, etc, etc, etc, we can all split up and fight for our causes, hopefully with some decorum. Democracy entails disagreement. The problem is, the folks in charge right now don’t seem to care much for democracy. If we’re not united to stop them, we’ll all be wandering in the wilderness alone til there’s not a recognizable country left to fight for.

Like him or not, Iraq or not, I can’t see how Yglesias deserves this. That said, it’d be great if Digby got as much exposure as possible.

we can always count on Retardo to get his dander up over sensible centrists – I think he just wants ideological purity and I respect him for that

But I really don’t. What I want is accountability in the blogosphere. Being for the Iraq War is bad and stupid enough; being for the Iraq War while slagging its dirty fucking hippie opponents is unforgivable. If centrist wankers want to endorse Yglesias that’s their problem and their prerogative; however, when anyone of the netroots does it, I reach for my bookmarks and begin to rant.

It’s not that there’s no room in my world for centrists. It’s that there’s no room for people like me in their world — as they showed in 2003. I’m not too keen on that happening again and the easiest thing to do about is to point out the alleged Leftists whose judgement was so wankerific — their judgement, their innate centrism, will rear its head again and it’s best that that not be a surprise.

If we forgive and forget, we invite them to side with the wingnuts again during the next crisis. Fuck that.

Besides maybe if we give Y a chance, and hold his toes tothe fire a little bit, we can get him to give Hitchens a swirlie.

Would go a long way to redeeming himself, in my opinion….

The alternative media — press and radio — has always proven a farm team for the pro’s, and some of them are pretty good at not only making it in the bigger league but of raising the discourse as well.

I always need to be reminded why I don’t read Yglesias on a regular basis. I had the impression that he turned against the war before it started, but I wouldn’t be surprised to be wrong about that. Kevin Drum still beats himself up over his early support, but he came to his senses pretty early.

There were a few in the MSM who were stalwartly anti-war, like Krugman and Herbert in the NY Times. Both of my local papers, the LA Times and the libertarian OC Register, were against it as well.

The Atlantic’s all over the place. James Fallows published an excellent series of articles on Iraq, which he turned into the book Blind Into Baghdad.

I would agree that they’d do better with the team of Digby and Tristero.

don’t think your thirst for power doesn’t shine through every bitter little word, and look every bit as ugly as power-lust on the far right.

Cumon, couldn’t you work something in about “slaking” his thirst for power? That would’ve been sweet. Point well taken though- HTML is quite power-mad. A regular Dick Cheney, that one.

[…] evidence? this discussion over at Sadly, […]

There is a bunch of themes here, and some of them I sympathize with.

1) The end of the promise of the blogosphere. Everyone was going to have a mouthpiece, media would decentralize. It didn’t happen, all the pundits just got blogs and they linked to other pundits and the message just moved into HTML. There are a bunch of reasons that happened and not all of them are the fault of the pundits. Getting pissy at Yglesias seems petty, yell at Josh Marshall or someone who really seemed to work at fucking everything up.

2) He used to say stupid contrarian things about a lot of things (free trade, Iraq, etc..) in this he sounded exactly like the democratic party, he quit doing this largely so I kept reading. Gilliard slags off on hippies or PETA or The Left all the time (or he used to until I got sick of reading it) and Sadly No! guest blogged for him.

Why Matt’s important though? Why I’d give him a spot with a megaphone over most bloggers? He’ll talk shit about the Israeli lobby and that’s the elephant in the room. The elected democrats got together and spiked a bill to take a unilateral executive war off the table with against the wishes of damn near every one of their voters and they did it because AIPAC worked the phones and twisted arms. Yglesias was all over that and left blogs….weren’t so much, and with the sour grapes tone I wonder if left blogs found other things to notice because that sort of comment is not the way you get a column in a major magazine

This is a strained metaphor, so I apologize to any offended parties beforehand.
But you would not send Tony Womack to do Jackie Robinson’s job. (For those who have no idea who Tony Womack is, that’s sort of the point.)
Perhaps, to be fair to MY I should say someone like Reggie Sanders instead of Womack.

Or a strained implied analogy. I know, smack me.

Yglesias whatever whatever, but the thing that gets my goat is that the Atlantic won’t sack up and hire Digby or Billmon (how easily we forget) or Roy Edroso. Instead they have to hire another tepid-ass pundit who (to borrow a phrase from Colbert) couldn’t melt an ice cube in the small of Halle Berry’s back, when truly interesting writers like the above keep on doing their Thomas Paine thing for free.

Yglesias isn’t the problem; if it wasn’t him, it’d be another kid just like him. The problem is the gutless editorial staff at the Atlantic who go for the dullsville writer with the right pedigree rather than someone more adventurous.

But they started with Sullivan, so what the hell do you expect?

Just for the record, I was wrong on a few counts about Jimmy Carter when I was a teenager. I hope that doesn’t mean a lifetime revocation of my credibility.

Don’t get me started, you lil’ punk!

I tend to agree, but even the bloggers you respect as proper lefties aren’t really supporting anyone left of Obama for the nomination. Sawicky has done good work defending Kucinich from Kos, but off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone openly advocating for Kucinich. I don’t think anyone at SN has expressed strong support for any candidate.

This is the other reason I have been thinking about quitting. Speaking for myself, I don’t *want* to get into the battles over primaries. But I feel sort of forced to because of the direction this whole thing is going. My natural sympathies are to Kucinich, Feingold (alas, not a candidate) and probably Edwards; likewise my suspicions are naturally aroused by Hillary and Obama. I’d rather be laissez-faire (hahah) about the whole thing. But the hacks for Hillary and Obama aren’t making that easy (read the NYRB piece on Obama by TAPPED’s editor; read especially his defense of Obama’s banking bill position and try not to laugh in disgust). I’d like to shut up, but only if *they* shut up too.

Unsurprisingly, those wishy-washy or worse about Iraq and other cut-and-dried issues, for whatever amount of time, strongly correlate to those who are naturally sympathetic to Hillary and Obama. It’s no accident — at least by my observation.

I’ve consulted with the quorom and we’ve decided that we like this HTML Mencken fella even better than we liked that Retardo fella. If he were a drinking man (and it’s not enirely clear he isn’t, but for some reason I smell an “X”) , we’d send a bottle of our favorite scotch his way. Cheers.

My natural sympathies are to Kucinich, Feingold (alas, not a candidate) and probably Edwards; likewise my suspicions are naturally aroused by Hillary and Obama

Wow. You really don’t see it. Now I feel like the guy in the movie wearing the tinfoil hat. Who’s wrong and who’s insane?

It’s fucking triage, goddam it. What indignity, what intrusion do you need to suffer to understand? They are kicking our ASSES. They fucking already took HABEUS CORPUS. What are you going to let them take next, while you argue about who the FUCKS on our side???? We truly are taking the short bus to irrelevance…

mikey

Thanks, Jay. Long time no see, BTW.

grampaw is being completely disingenuous almost so much that i think he is Retardo’s dead dixiecrat grampaw come to life as a sockpuppet…

Umm, what? Does someone know something about robotslave (a.k.a. Grampaw)’s aliases that I don’t? Because if he chose the name to make fun of… then I’m banning him from here and waging internet jihad on his sorry ass.

No no mikey. I’m voting D no matter who the candidate is. That’s a given. Trust me, I mean it when I say I hate wingnuts; but I also hate wingnut enablers.

…and why just be content with getting rid of the wingnuts? Why settle for just anything but a wingnut when you can have something better? I’ll settle if I have to, for sure, but…

Ahh well. If I’ve lost Mikey, I’ve lost my base (as the saying goes). Time to quit.

In a way you gained a little bit of PP. I think you are right- there is no way to trust MY- you don’t know how the wind is going to blow. He has never done anything else but pontificate for a living- this is why I just can’t say that I could completely trust him- these guys have kind of fallen for the fool’s gold- these guys are not going to be real wonks, they are just going to play them on the internet. This whole thing is pretty stupid.

Fucking brilliant. You backed up your points right down the line.

As for the carping in this thread, senor html, let it go. It is beneath you.

For today at least, you have a performed the much needed service of being the cold, wet, slap of reality.

Nice job.

This might be the perfect video to lighten the mood and the spirit of all (for we can all agree on the Althouse).

The Altmouse Files: a portrait in non partisanship. If it doesn’t have you ROTFLMAO you’re done for.

Wow, this post is completely insane. Tomemos summed up my basic feelings with

And my serious comment boils down to this: if we refuse to forgive those who were wrong about the war (or anything) and acknowledge it, then we’re not a political movement, we’re a hermetic order.

Yglesias, as far as I can remember, turned against the war before it actually started. Since then, he was repeatedly and at length gone on about how wrong he was, and he’s actually gone into a lot of detail explaining why he was wrong, and what his current views are on foreign policy. He was 21 years old in 2003. From my reading of him, he’s done a lot of growing up since then (and since that stupid endangered species post). Is Mencken’s position really that nobody gets to make any mistakes, that once wrong, there’s no point in listening to somebody ever again? If so, I’m confused at how his sympathies in the presidential race can possibly be with Edwards, who supported the war, and was much tardier than Yglesias in repenting of it (Yglesias has also taken the lesson of his mistakes with respect to Iraq by advocating very forcefully against a possible war with Iran. That’s also rather better than Edwards, who came out with lots of “all options are still on the table” nonsense).

In any event, this entire post is completely ridiculous, and has just about no merit whatsoever.

“Lighten up, Francis.”

For the record, I am:

* opposed to the Iraq war, and have been since before it started.

* in favor of universal health care

* opposed to the failed policies of the IMF, the World Bank, and more generally the economic reform framework known as the “Washington Consensus,” and have been since before the Seattle protests.

* In favor of the ERA, of free and legal abortion and birth control, and of comprehensive, factual sex education

* opposed to legalizing torture anywhere for any reason

* in favor of progressive taxation, and redistribution of wealth

* opposed to government censorship of anything, any time, anywhere

* in favor of laws codifying the rights of reporters to protect their sources

* in favor of the Kyoto protocols

* in favor of gun control, particularly handgun regulation

* in favor of amnesty for presently illegal immigrants, and for almost unrestricted immigration policy in the future

* in favor of federally funded campaign advertising

* opposed to monopolies, such as the one held by the cable companies on the high-bandwidth / low latency wiring in most of America’s homes

* in favor of legalization of almost all presently illegal drugs, barring only the ones that actually kill you within hours.

* in favor of a military that accurately reflects the social makeup of the nation it serves, by draft if it can not be achieved by other means

* fucking etc.

—

So. According to Retardo, I’m a far-right Kaus-kook neoliberal fucktard blah blah lots of name-calling but no substance yadda yadda Hewitt. So be it. Just have a look over that list and realize that a person can hold all of those views, and still be regarded by Retardo as a crypto-right-wing-apologist-ideology-traitor.

And ask yourself if you’re comfortable with that.

Retardo’s beef with me, as far as I can make out, is twofold:

1) I’m not in favor of his program of destroying The Corporations / The Plutocracy / Capitalism Itself, and replacing it with An Economic System To Be Named Later, and:

2) I’m going to call him out on it when he summons the specter of a Foaming Yellow Menace, as presently embodied by China (Japan had their turn, but probably before Retardo was old enough to type) in the service of his Those Evil Capitalists Must Be Dealt With rhetoric.

ah. another unnecessary episode of explosive diarrhea.

sure, matt got a new job. here’s what he says, “…I’m leaving my job at The American Prospect to take a position at The Atlantic Monthly where my primary responsibility is going to be . . . producing this blog.”

So, what’s the issue, here, really? it’s not like the Atlantic is springing for anything new or different from Matt, nor is it like they’ll serve as a particularly more advantageous platform for him. Don’t like his blog? Continue not reading it. Personally, I can’t imagine someone more deserving, in terms of being a near-but-not-total asshat, of the putative benefits of becoming the kept blogger of a low circulation centrist blowhard magazine.

I certainly wouldn’t wish that on anyone I thought was right about anything, or who I wanted to continue to be right about things in the future. The truth of the matter is that Digby has a better platform for expressing herself where she is, albeit perhaps having to work a day job. Do I think there are more deserving authors than Matt? Duh. Do I represent The Atlantic’s primary audience? No. So…there you go.

And all those assholes-in-print who were not only wrong about the Iraq war but also harshed on those who were right about it – you’d like it if they went into some other line of work. yep, understandable. me too. And tough shit about that not happening, right?

Right, right. The troll lies again.

Here’s what actually happens: I attack a triangulator — a Brad DeLong or Kevin Drum — for their …well, their triangulating. Grampaw comes along to call me a racist commie. Being a social-dem, I don’t like being called a racist commie. Especially by a neoliberal — to use the correct term for Grampaw’s sweatshop-loving, environment-hating, union-loathing, indigenous culture-destroying pathology.

also Retardo i take back that quote regarding my attempt at explaining your vitriol – i read your post of links on MY – i dunno i guess MY is immature or something

although you did mention taking a shine to Kucinich you should play that up more to get grampaw worked up – heh

but are there any SadlyNosians for Richardson or just me?

OOH, LOOK AT ALL THE PRETTY EPITHETS.

Wouldn’t Retardo seem a lot more credible if he actually addressed the substance of the argument, instead of just spewing more and more name-calling on top of his existing name-calling?

sure this is a meta thread – but I like Retardo’s posts – it get the blood flowing in more ways than one (and in the most preferable way i must say)

I’d be more pissed if this MY wanker got a gig on a cable news show but as it stands, the Atlantic?….. meh

[now ill go back to being a lurker]

Did hugely really just admit to…

…nah, I’m sure I’m reading too much into it, this time.

“I do believe it’s reasonable to forgive, with reservations, those who were wrong about the war, admit it, and pledge to be more careful in the future.”

The problem never was that the pro-war assholes made a mistake, it was that they IGNORED THE EVIDENCE. Every reasonable person in the fucking world outside of the United States knew that the Bush Administration’s case for invasion and occupation was a fraud. It’s not a matter of ideology, it’s a matter of respect for truth.

So we can support them now that it’s sorta almost popular to say that the war was a mistake? But when peer pressure starts leaning on them for an Iranian invasion, or a Cuban invasion, or a Venezuelan invasion — and when they again start ignoring available evidence, so as to fit in with the thoughtful pundit class (perhaps, also, so as to distance themselves from weirdos and kooks like Chomsky) — we need merely jot a note to ourselves about something more to forgive them for in the future?

Forget the fucking labels, the Liberal/Centrist/Whatever crap. It’s not about that. It’s about respect for evidence and respect for truth.

Maybe a mirror image of this chart is developing on the left side of things. Different target audiences require different voices and different levels of ideological commitment.

The major difference is that pretty much everyone on the Right side is getting paid. Lawd knows it’s wrong but Kaye Grogan and Dan Riehl are making money off their writing.

Originally the lefty blog thing was about independent self-expression, unfettered by profit motive and corporate paymasters. But that has gotten old for some people and it’s about cashing in on all that time spent on the internets.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The ‘Merkan dream is supposed to be all about getting paid to do what you love, like the Hollywierd people say in the interviews, no?

Keepin it Realz has turned into Playas and Hataz.

But anyway, I knew going into Iraq was fucking wrong from the get go. And I know that we need to get the fuck out of there, completely. None of this “residual force to protect our interests” bullshit that Hillbama is peddling.

The “purity trolls” (AKA “hatin’ ass bitchez”) on the left don’t really want anything too crazy. Staying the hell out of the Middle East, universal health care, not totally fucking the ecosystem, and you know, getting something done about these things, soon, without the endless, mindnumbing, technocratic wonkety-wank whose main purpose is to convince everybody that practical things are impossible and unrealistic.

The powers that be will pay good money for that.

OK, I have an interview tomorrow. Where the fuck is my bottle?

###

grampaw – you accused Retardo of having a “thirst for power” – isnt he one of the hosts here? what kind of power does he have? make me vote for Kucinich?

so what he employs some socialist rhetoric? bfd.. you are using imprecise, blunt, and trollish language when you refer to his political leanings and he possibly likes more precision – I dunno man you look rude to me when getting into it with retardo…

but in the end i am more with mikey (and others): we are wasting blood, treasure, and our nations future security – we need to right the ship. Matt the Wanker “moving” to the Atlantic matters very little

oh shit grampaw lol – i really need teh preview button cuz one of my comments looks like i caught a case of teh gheyz….

i MEANT that his posts are a little more inflammatory and cause a stir – not one in my pants – oh fuck it….

good night lol

Yeaargggh!

I agree wholeheartedly. I know unpopular positions. I was not only against the war (a popular position) but knew America had lost even when Bush was prancing around on that aircraft carrier (inconceivable to most at the time). What powered my magic 8 ball? The realization that American soldiers and Iraqi insurgents basically want the same thing: yanqui go home.

The two keys for bloggers to get an MSM job:

1. Blog under your real name
2. Have no sense of humor whatsoever

Er, Hugely?

I know, I’m picking a nit here, but…

I honestly didn’t notice whether or not any of your posts seemed homosexual, but I do note that you don’t seem capable of discussing sexual subtext without showing a bit of gay-fright and resorting to diminutive terms like “teh gheyz.”

What I found amusing was the fact that one of your posts could be interpreted as evincing a sexualized response to Retardo’s political arguments. That ain’t neither gay nor not-gay, it’s just… well, it’s a sign of emotion overtaking reason, and in a rather dramatic and comical fashion, even if it were just subconscious, or no more than an entirely accidental turn of phrase, as I’m sure it was.

[…] principled disagreement has arisen at Sadly, No over the hiring of Matt Yglesias by the Atlantic magazine, a subject which, […]

I was for the war BUT against the troops.

*shrug*

I dunno about you, grandpaw, but when I look at you essentially calling Mencken a commie and a racist, despite having very little to base that on, I dispute that there’s much substantive for Mencken to challenge you on.

1) vis a vis commie – Mencken ain’t a commie, and I speak as a fully blown wild eyed democratic socialist. He’d fit right in on the centre-left of our nominally social democratic Labour Party (speaking as a Brit), or maybe in the greens if he were having a good time. This is, of course, quite far to the left amongst your whole American political system, but if Sweden can deal with social democracy without the collapse of capitalism as we know it, then I think your statements are wildly overblown.

2) vis a vis racist – as far as I can tell, you’re projecting that from Mencken’s statements concerning globalization. I, myself, am ambivalent concerning free trade – I personally disagree with Mencken on the focus upon American workers which might be to the detriment of other workers in terms of the gains from trade (not the Washington Consensus, but not necessarily totally free trade), but I can see where he’s coming from, as a social democrat. The statements that he’s made that talk about sustainability – well, he’s right. The way the West has developed over the past couple of centuries is not something that can be expanded – indeed, we’re trying to contract it ourselves, to develop new ways of development that don’t cause such harm to the environment. That’s at least what I got from the “better to be a subsistence farmer than not to be alive at all” comment (I paraphrase, of course) – that, whilst subsistence farming is not exactly the best way to live, even under sustainable development, it is better than dying from drought, or flood, because we collectively have destroyed the planet. We need to be sustainable now so we still have the resources and ability to get the Third World to develop in a sustainable fashion itself. This suggestion that if you question the growth of conspicuous consumption as is throughout the world, you’re a racist, I feel only poisons and cheapens the debate on sustanability and trade and Third World development that we should be having.

There’s nothing racist about what Mencken has said – he’s been protectionist, but it ain’t because he’s afraid of the YELLOW PERIL or anything like that. It’s because he is afraid of what this Washington Consensus that you avowedly hate might do to ordinary working people in America, and to the environment in general. And I think that the former is a fair (if somewhat parochial) point to make, whilst the latter is an excellent point.

Why Matt’s important though? Why I’d give him a spot with a megaphone over most bloggers? He’ll talk shit about the Israeli lobby and that’s the elephant in the room. The elected democrats got together and spiked a bill to take a unilateral executive war off the table with against the wishes of damn near every one of their voters and they did it because AIPAC worked the phones and twisted arms. Yglesias was all over that and left blogs….weren’t so much, and with the sour grapes tone I wonder if left blogs found other things to notice because that sort of comment is not the way you get a column in a major magazine

Ed, this is an important point about Yglesias and I appreciate you bringing it up.

It sucks that people act as if Yglesias is the first person to say this shit about AIPAC. In point of fact, Alex Cockburn, Chomsky, Finkelstein, et al., have been saying it for years — largely based on the ideological calculus that a real Leftist’s anti-imperialism trumps whatever tribalist loyalty he may have. (Indeed, I’d say tribalist loyalty is anti-socialist per se, and in a way that nationalist loyalty is not, but I’ll defer that to the resident expert on socialism, Jillian.) But thanks to Yglesias’s centrist friends, people who’ve long been talking about your ‘elephant in the room’ (and for the right reasons) have been blacklisted, slagged, deemed ‘unserious’ or ‘too shrill’.

Gavin’s blogged on AIPAC crap; so have I. Many times. And long before Yglesias signed on and inspired Doughy Pantload to smear him as an anti-Semite.

It was Yglesias’s fortune to find a contrarian point in anti-AIPACery at just the right time — a bit before would have been too gutsy and too dirty fucking hippie. That the contrarian point is Leftist and correct are merits beside the point, which is that Yglesias came to it, from what I can tell, by the same reason he came to being anti-War: mostly by opposition to a noxious personality. With the war, it took Bush’s sustained depravity to make Yglesias think right. For the Israel lobby issue, it took long exposure to Marty Peretz’s awfulness. It should only have taken a cursory look at American Middle East policy for the last 30 years to recognise the problem with the Lobby, not the failure of the Iraq War or exposure to the racist spewings of one Marty Peretz.

You know who sounds just like Chomsky nowadays? Zbigniew Brzezinski. But Zbig is not a Chomskyite. Fuck, he’s not even a Leftist. He’s just been pushed to appear Left by horrible wingnuttery. It shouldn’t have to get to that point. Well, Yglesias has been pushed to that point too. But look at the cost; look at what it takes to make these people make sense! Obviously, I’m happy that they are no longer wingnut-enablers. But my post is about worrying for when ‘normal’ times return. That’s where a pundit’s judgement comes in. If someone was idiot enough to fall for Iraq, then whatever their subsequent mea culpa, it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll fall for the next wingnut remedy for whatever international crisis, real or imagined.

[Sorry if this is even more than usually incoherent; insomnia-delirium excuse applies.]

FSC:

1) OK, yes, I realize calling Retardo a “Communist” is Red-baiting, and frankly, that’s why I haven’t leveled that charge against him since he repudiated the term lo these many moons ago. So, with all that said, how would you characterize his economic position, particularly vis-a-vis “trade?” Can you give a positivist or at least prescriptive description, rather than an anti-[list-of-capitalist-iniquities] definition?

2) No, I’m not extrapolating at all. I’m going solely on words Retardo has actually written about China and “Chinese culture.” See egregious example here, longer, tedious discussion here, and Retardo addressing the substantive charges against him… well, nowhere. Lots of lengthy, unsubstantiated fits of name-calling, though.

As to sustainability, I’m with you… and it looks to me like most of what can be done there falls under the jurisdiction of local or national governments. Shutting down international “free trade,” however you might choose to interpret that phrase, won’t matter in the slightest if developed nations don’t check their present energy consumption internally, and developing nations continue to aspire to the standard of living that we enjoy, thanks in large part to our high energy consumption, in the first world.

There are no ‘substantive charges’, dumbfuck. You call me a racist; I’m not. That’s it. It’s the same logic that says that anyone wanting immigration reform is an anti-Hispanic bigot. It’s the same logic that said all the techies Microsoft shitcanned and outsourced weren’t righteously pissed about losing their jobs to whomever, but that they were prejudiced against East Indians.

But I’ll play your game you sack of shit. Culture does matter in the sense that your beloved model of wasteful, planet-destroying neoliberalism is more easily embraced by authoritarian cultures (East Asian: China, Vietnam, Singapore), more slowly embraced or even rejected by more communitarian cultures (South American). Obviously, systems of government can overcome this to a degree (Pinochet, for instance, overode Chilean culture to implement your happy ideology on the populace), but culture does matter.

–Which is why, when your kind encounters a resistant culture, it tries to smash it, specifically in the case with Bolivia and water rights; generally in the constant pushing of Hernando de Soto’s propertarian schemes on S.A. This is merely the ‘civilized’ update to what the Puritans did to the communitarian hippie Native Americans; cultural genocide being an improvement over cultural and physical genocide sombined, sure, but that’s not saying much.

But you don’t need to smash East Asian culture because — especially when it’s combined with an autocratic government — it too nicely complements your great plan of converting the world into a horrible yuppie monolith of corporate whores, wasteful consumers, murderers of the environment.

This is the point you were too dense to grasp in the original post: that there’s nothing more repugnant than the American model of consumption, yet some cultures aren’t disposed to see anything horrible about it. But then, neither do you see it. On the contrary, you argue that to not give it to them (along with our jobs and livelihood after a period in which they are to suffer incredible growing pains at the same rate our society experiences dying pains; in other words *transfer* the already horrible American model to a society where the scale of wasteful consumption will be even more genormous) is to be cruel.

I used to think that religious nuts were nature’s means of ridding the earth of the human species, but now I think that it’s maybe people like you. Because rest assured, if your gift of SUVs and sweatshops and coal plants etc is uniformly smeared all over the globe, the Earth will die. But hey, at least we didn’t make some third world peasant stay on his farm or deny him a pair of Nikes or worse yet deny a transnational corporation near-slave labor and huge profits. No, *that* would be the true crime against humanity.

Gah — I forgot about the most authoritarian culture EVAR: Russian culture. That one was quite the success for you guys too, huh? It turned out just like you wanted: a plutocratic elite that can pay Christina Aguilera for b-day party concerts, massive corruption, feudalist class structure, god-awful pollution, shitty iron fisted government. Great stuff. Too bad they couldn’t pay their bills or else we’d be still be hearing about how AWESOME the neolib experiment was there.

Difference between Russia and Bolivia: Bolivia was able to give you fucks the finger; Russia didn’t get the chance, had no cultural inertia going the other way; the shambles you made were a gift to a born autocrat like Putin. Thanks!

grampaw:

1) Against him since now, you mean. Personally, as a red myself, it’s annoying when people blur the definitions. Like I said, I’d call HTML a protectionist. I ascribe no particular value judgement to that, merely that I think, from what I’ve read, that HTML perceives a threat to employment from globalizing pressures which have resulted in the movement of capital overseas, and threatened jobs, that this has benefited the elites of most countries far more than it has the poor (and it has had mixed results for other working classes in certain countries) and that the best way to deal with this is through protection. Like I said, I agree with his premise, but disagree with him that the way to deal with it is through protection, but I accept where he’s coming from with it. Of course, I might be wrong – I might be simplifying what HTML has said, in which case HTML is more than welcome to smack what I said down.

2) Crassly said, perhaps, in the first post, but I’m still nowhere near convinced of racism – wasn’t Deng Xiaoping’s dictum after the inital stages of reform, imparting the entreprenurial spirit amongst the Chinese; “To get rich is glorious”? Obviously this is not suggesting that they’re all greedy, grasping, etc, merely that they were trying to revive an entreprenurial spirit that would have been somewhat destroyed in the establishment of Maoist Communism. I’m not sure what is meant by “culture of “face””, admittedly, but I think you’re attributing a hell of a lot to one throwaway phrase.

Ah, I see, so it’s not capitalism you oppose, it’s consumption.

You’re right, we’d all be better off if we gave this shit up and became hunter-gatherers. Or maybe subsistence farmers.

Tell us, Retardo, what your vision is for the Urban Human Being, if that’s not an oxymoron in your moral calculus.

Just think about it— instead of producing his own food, a man produces shoes (of the devil, no doubt), and then goes and exchanges them for food, without restriction with a farmer who harvests more than he can eat.

Dear God, it sounds like a nightmare. I can’t even figure out who’s the eviler exploiter there.

Oh, and thanks for this:

wasteful, planet-destroying neoliberalism is more easily embraced by authoritarian cultures (East Asian: China, Vietnam, Singapore)

Yeah, I think I’ll just sit back and let your readers decide for themselves whether or not you’ve got some problematic assumptions kicking around in that great big autodidact head of yours with regard to “East Asian” cultures.

Now, let’s see, where would we go to find some readers who would unhesitatingly agree that certain entire cultures are inherently “authoritarian…?”

wow. html – way to engage a troll and completely obscure whatever “point” you thought you were making. nice job. i happen to agree with you on most substantive points of your frothy-mouthed rantings, but nonetheless… way to employ a shrill, completely self-defeating tone of righteous indignation. wicked.

btw – dude, if you think MY is so much of a fucking tool that you’ll shit all over the walls when he changes jobs, why haven’t you featured his asshattery here? the queestion is rhetorical – MY, despite being a total fucking tool, is at least nominally on “your side,” and you know “(y)our side” needs all the help it can get.

so… get over it. seriously.

grampaw, there is a significant academic argument that the political culture in SE Asian countries is conducive to authoritarian regimes, although it’s disputed as to why that is. Some scholars point out that many SE Asian nations have a passive as opposed to a participant political culture and this affects the nature of the regime – that the people of the SE Asian nations are prepared to see the leader of the nation as “the father” of the nation and in return for the leader looking after the people, the people will be more quiescent. Of course, that can break down when the people decide their leaders are not acting to look after the people. Some have suggested that this more passive political culture developed out of the Confucian value system. That isn’t suggesting it’s “innate” or it just “happens” to be that way – it’s the product of social, cultural and political forces that have happened beforehand. It’s not saying “they will never accept democracy”; it’s saying “at this point, it’s likely that there will be an authoritarian government rather than a totally democratic one.

Which is of course the irritating thing about the right – they suggest that culture is unfixed, unchanging, which is patently false. But what has happened in the past obviously has a bearing upon the present. Many of the “new democracies” that emerged when the Soviet Union collapsed have a very shaky political culture that is not wholly reconciled to the kind of pluralistic, open democracy that we are used to, especially in Russia where they seem to be lapsing back into authoritarianism. It doesn’t mean that they will never be democratic. Just that there are social, political, economic and yes, cultural reasons why at the moment, it is unlikely that these nations will become pluralistic democracies – indeed, that’s very much the case with Iraq.

Yesterday morning I heard Mike Barnicle talking with Jim Kramer, the stock market loon who admits the reason young frat boys love his show is that stock-picking is “legalized gambling.” Kramer was saying that he recently met with the folks in charge of Pepsi, who told him that it would be crazy to have a president of Frito-Lay over the age of 24– today’s market depends on taking a very accurate pulse of the 20-somethings. The You-tubers, i-podders, blah-blah.

I honestly think the MY appointment is about age and market anxiety at the Atlantic, not any real ideological move or pseudo-move. “How do we ‘blog’ better, Chris?” “I don’t– hiccup– bloody know, I’m busy writing about Waugh and the secular Kurds.” “Uh, OK. Let’s see, our only other blogger’s like 50.” etc. etc.

Sure this kid has probably never heard of, let alone read, Moral Man and Immoral Society, but we can’t be surprised. The history and structural analysis of imperialism, even in its more beneficent forms, is not a glossy-page moneymaker. More importantly for the Atlantic, it’s not what the kids do.

So Yglesis is going to be the next Thomas Friedman.

Someone had to be groomed to take over the “The World is Flat” franchise.

HTML said, “What I want is accountability in the blogosphere. Being for the Iraq War is bad and stupid enough; being for the Iraq War while slagging its dirty fucking hippie opponents is unforgivable…It’s not that there’s no room in my world for centrists. It’s that there’s no room for people like me in their world — as they showed in 2003. I’m not too keen on that happening again and the easiest thing to do about is to point out the alleged Leftists whose judgement was so wankerific — their judgement, their innate centrism, will rear its head again. If we forgive and forget, we invite them to side with the wingnuts again during the next crisis. Fuck that.”

Amen.

Its one thing to forgive an honest mistake but its another thing altogether to forgive a dishonest mistake. Too many of the centrists/liberal hawks were guilty not of an intellectual error, rather their “mistaken” support for the Iraq War had more to do with monkey politics and throwing in with the dominant monkeys than it had to do with errors in logic. They were desperate to be one of the Kewl Kidz even if it meant they had to step on the backs of the UnKewl who had never done them wrong. They were a lot less worried about stabbing the dirty hippies in the back (even when they were making total well-reasoned, well-documented sense) than they were about offending the wingnut war pimps (even when they were obviously lying).

It’s not just a question of intelligence. It’s a question of character. Its a question of intellectual honesty. We could forgive honest mistakes but for too many of the liberal hawks those “mistakes” were made in bad faith.

FSC:

1) I can find no argument with you there, apart from the minor point that Retardo foams at the mouth when he’s characterized as “protectionist,” instead of simply embracing the term.

2) Just look at what he’s said here about Singapore, Vietnam, and Russia, characterizing them all as “authoritarian cultures,” and the way he launched into that fucked up stereotyping hate speech about Russians? For fuck’s sake, Russian culture is far more dynamic and diverse (and possibly more literary, if you go in for poetry) than that of Sweden or America or even, uh… Bolivia?

Bolivia?

Anyway, I’m beginning to see that the problem here might be that Retardo is incapable of or unwilling to distinguishing between a people’s culture and that people’s political or economic circumstances. The problem with the inability to make this distinction is that it tends to lead the observer to simply assume, without any historical investigation, that the culture deterministically generates the governance, and that therefore any fault in governance is necessarily the fault of the culture, and as culture is synonymous with ethnicity, the fault is laid at the foot of the ethnicity in question.

This patently false theory of ethnicity-driven socio-political harm is the very root of cultural bigotry; it needs only a pejorative term or two for the maligned culture to perpetuate the fraud indefinitely. Add in even an imaginary difference in appearance, and the ethnic bias becomes racism, but it should always be remembered that racism can not be based on cosmetic difference alone. The ethnic bias, the attribution of unwanted social traits to the “culture” of the maligned people, is a necessary element of all racism.

it needs only a pejorative term or two for the maligned culture to perpetuate the fraud indefinitely.

This clause suffers horribly for want of a comma.

I did not at all mean to suggest that the maligned culture perpetuates its oppressed status through ethnic slurs. I meant only that a dominant culture can use derogatory language to perpetuate the vilification of another culture, and deploy such language as a sort of wall between the cultures (which will be mingling regardless, but that’s another set of lecture notes entirely).

dude. grampaw. you’re an asshole and a troll. maybe you don’t want to admit that. maybe you think you’re discussing something remotely connected with the spirit or origin of the post, or maybe you think what you have to say about whatever incredibly scattered topics you were ranting about is vitally important, but um… you’re wrong. seriously, say this out loud: “patently false theory of ethnicity-driven socio-political harm is the very root of cultural bigotry; it needs only a pejorative term or two for the maligned culture to perpetuate the fraud indefinitely” – you sound like you’re about to come all over your M. Phil.
stop it.

grampaw:

I think the problem here is the definition of “culture”; you’re taking it to be, well, the culture in general, whilst I’m reading it as the political culture, which is a subset of culture, certainly, but one which is quite definitely influential in looking at a particular country’s form and style of governance. Other factors, obviously, do apply, but the political culture is, as I’ve argued before, important in looking at how a country is governed. I also think that your maintenance that HTML is looking to culture to the exclusion of all other factors is a bit exaggerated. Just because one is focusing upon political culture does not mean that it is to the exclusion of all other factors; indeed, since we were arguing about culture in the first place, and you were pointing out HTML’s mention of “culture” as evidence of his racism, I’d find it odd if we weren’t arguing about “culture”, to the exclusion of all other things.

I have no trouble in describing Vietnam as having an authoritarian political culture, since it is currently a state which is under the control of an authoritarian political party, and with Russia, which had a vibrant political culture for all of a few years or so from the glasnost reforms to the economic downturn that came with mass privatisation, but had a seriously authoritarian political culture before and, increasingly under Putin, after, and the same goes for Singapore, though to a lesser degree – you cannot argue with any degree of seriousness that any of those countries currently embrace liberal democratic values as practised in Western democracies. Singapore gets the closest, but it’s practically a one party state, with various harsh laws on “seditious materials”. I will concede I do not know much about the general political culture of Bolivia.

I think the problem here is that grampaw is a sophist who quibbles in bad faith and has altogether too much attention paid to him. Refuting one who lives to taunt is pointless. See Angel, Annie.

Look, asswipe trolls aside, the point is quite simple. If you are paid money to write your opinions and views on things, it helps to be right, a lot. Maybe all the time or near as all the time as you can manage. If you’re wrong, well, it impacts the base reason why anyone should take you seriously. Example, the entire right media/blogsphere. So I think you’ve got to be a trolling asshat to say that HTMl is looking for ideological purity when in fact, it’s entirely a matter of looking for someone who is right on the substance, not the ideology.

But, asshats will be fucksticks, that a rule of nature…

“You know who doesn’t deserve being paid for their opinion? Just out of principle? Anyone anywhere who was for the Iraq War for whatever amount of time. Period.”

Amen.

FUCK Yglesias.

I’ve always hated that mealy-mouthed little waffling prick.

and, I must concur:

FUCK ANYONE who ever supported the war. You might as well just come out sucking Bush and Cheney’s cock while calling yourself ‘Libertarian’.

SOOOO impressive.

A lot of us were led around by the nose by prevailing wisdom, we had no idea we would get fucked so hard.

Chumps. Yeah, that was a real persuasive case they had. Who knew?

For fuck’s sake.

No sweat, Mencken. You haven’t lost me. There is value in calling pundits on their hypocrisy. There is value in your honest, strongly-held positions. And if one of them is consistently wrong and/or inhuman in their positions and exhortations, they deserve to be kicked around until they are no longer in a position to influence the political discourse.

If, on the other hand, they have generally valuable, thoughtful things to say, even if I don’t agree with all of them, and were once utterly wrong on one huge issue and have now come to recognize how wrong they were, I cannot understand how that would be unforgivable…

mikey

Billy Pilgrim, your heart is in the right place, but TIME has been a far-right mouthpiece since long before Saint Reagan (“MUSIC PLAYS THE ANGELS SING”). TIME, which was in bed with Madame Chiang (Kai-Shek), played a key role in igniting the McCarthy Witch Hunt with its anti-Dem “Who lost China?” hysteria; and it more or less called Ike a coward for not starting The Vietnam War As We Know It a decade earlier in Laos. Joe Klein is their idea of a Lib, fer chrissakes.

Dude, Mencken, this is effin’ wee-todd-ed. Yglesias was wrong (by his own admission) on Iraq ab initio, therefore his credibility is zero from now to forever? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve read all day—and I read something by Ann Althouse today.

Not that it matters, but neither Fitzgerald nor Hemingway could spell worth a damn. (If either of them was a good writer is another conversation.) Anyway, enough with the spelling corrections.

And a day’s reading of Kung fu tzu will give you an understanding of Chinese ‘culture’ (such as it is.) Start with the Analects.

Yeah, I know. I’m a fucking idiot.

The (learned, i.e. culture-based) desire to conspicuously consume, the desire to ostentatiously display luxurious chattel property as a signal to others in one’s society of one’s superiority, is uniformly distributed throughout the world and any statement to the contrary is racist.

Whatever. But I will agree it was stupid of me to allow the troll to hijack the thread. My bad; I should have ignored him.

PS – FSC, thanks for being my translator. You’ve got me pretty much pegged.

late to the party, but in total agreement. matt doesn’t need an Atlantic Monthly job, Matt wants an Atlantic monthly job. it is precisely why he was wrong about iraq–it was a career move made in the limbic system–it never even rose to the level of his (excellent) judgment on so many things.

careering, you’re careering.

FSC, there’s only one problem with the distinction you are drawing between political culture and wider culture— it turns Retardo’s argument into a circular one. Under that narrow definition, Retardo’s assertion that “particular cultures [Vietnam, etc] are more prone to authoritarianism than others” can be reduced to “authoritarianism is caused by authoritarianism.”

While it’s true that authoritarianism can be self-perpetuating, I’m pretty sure that’s not what Retardo was getting at there. And it’s definitely not what he’s talking about when he says some cultures have a disproportionate propensity to “conspicuously consume.”

I have to wonder how I’m supposed to construe “culture” as meaning “political culture” when Retardo says a Chinese “culture of face” is driving the Chinese people to “ostentatiously display luxurious chattel property,” to use his lovely choice of words.

I’m quite interested in that dismissive “whatever” he tosses out after offering up the idea that cultures are more or less equally likely to engage in material status displays. I personally can’t think of any cultures that don’t do this (I can think of plenty that have believed at some point that they do it more tastefully than other cultures), but I’m open to suggestions, particularly if the culture in question doesn’t live under conditions of severe resource restriction.

Hmm, and one afterthought— let’s add Venezuela to our list of Latin American Countries of Interest. Retardo, do you believe Venezuelan culture has a propensity for authoritarianism? Is the culture driving Chavez to consolidate the powers of government to himself, or is there something else at work?

I am totally willing to forgive Yglesias his stupid, incompetent, red-baiting support for the Splendid War.

In exchange, I would require he actually write something interesting. Something that actually, y’know, sheds some light on something.

Just searching on “free trade” on his site unleashes such a serious avalanche of mediocrity and general tepid insiderism that I have no interest whatsoever in what his opinion on the war was or is or will be…

I really get a kick out of the people who say MY should be forgiven his youthful indiscretion about being wrong on the Iraq war. That was what? A little more than four years ago? Just think of all of the educatin’ and learning’ he’s had since then. The opportunities for personal growth are enormous.

Grampaw, in the words of the Residents, “ignorance of your culture is not considered cool”. You clearly don’t know much about Venezuela or its history; whatever consolidation of power is occurring under Chavez, it’s pretty tame compared to the last couple of military dictatorships the country lived under–it just gets capitalists spinning at high RPMs because of the threat of land redistribution and opt-out from the Washington Consensus.

Maybe Chavez is consolidating his power because of real, rather than imagined, external threats. Have you heard of, say, the Bush Administration?

Robert Green pretty much sums it up. Super mega bingoes.

would someone please pull the plug on Gramps? Twould be a mercy killing.

First, on the MY-was-young excuse: nobody forced the guy into blogging-while-twenty. Who can accept “But I was twenty years old and hoped to be recognized as a wunderkind” as an excuse? At 20, you have the same obligation as everyone else with respect to your idiotic opinions — to keep them to your damn self.

Second, you know who was right about everything? Billmon. I’d pay a steep premium to read a column of his every week.

Anyone who believed the bullshit the government pumped out about the Iraq situation for even half a second is a damn fool. At the time the war buildup was going on, I was in the middle of moving out of my fiance’s place because I had broken off a four year engagement, working full time, and going to school full time. Even with the miniscule amount of spare time and energy I had left, I was able to find enough conflicting information and alternative explanations to make the whole thing look fishy. If *I* could do that, I would damn well expect anyone who expects to be taken seriously as a “pundit” to have done the same.

By the way, here’s a trivia question for you….name one war the US has been involved in, other than WWII or the Civil War, that the government did not lie to get us involved in. And no fair arguing that the Spanish-American war originated with Pullitzer newspapers – the source of the lie about the Maine was the government.

Now, the fact that having accepted the official propaganda at face value and the fact that it makes you a damn fool doesn’t mean you can’t ever be forgiven. But it does mean that it will cast a pall over other’s perception of your judgement forever. It doesn’t mean you can be a good, decent person whose opinions are often respected – despite the fact that I think James Baker is a weasel, for instance, I think he did good work with ISG – but like it or not, you have to live with the fact that you took a foolish position when you had every reason in the world not to. It’s better to just accept it and move on – we’re really willing to let you move on, and the damage caused by the cognitive dissonance if you don’t is just not pretty.

grandpaw:

Oy. Again you are assuming HTML is talking about cultures as if they are fixed and unchanging. And I think that’s reading too much into what HTML is saying. When HTML is saying “such and such a place is an authoritarian culture”, I am taking it to mean “at this particular time”. There is a world of difference between, say, “China has an authoritarian culture” and, say, “Islam is a religion of death”. The latter assumes fixed and unchanging qualities to an amorphous idea, the former is noting a current situation. They both ain’t exactly drawn out, but I think the context is clear.

HTML:

No problem. Any friend of AJP Taylor is a friend of mine.

They both ain’t exactly drawn out, but I think the context is clear.

Sorry, to expand:

They both ain’t exactly drawn out, and could definitely use some clarification (but then, what couldn’t?), but only one assumes fixed and unchanging characteristics to what is a pretty amorphous concept.

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Let’s not talk about ‘age’: let’s talk about willingness to learn that comes from being on this side of the fence, because if you don’t, you get slaughtered like this. The Virgin Ben Shapiro will never change his opinions on anything because wingnut welfare mitigates against it.

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