John Cole is driven into shrill unholy madness

This is not about what these policies and this vile rhetoric are doing to this nation and our standing …

Considering the demographic and opinion trends in the US, the country both looks and thinks less like the conservative party each year. For that reason, I don’t think it matters to them how much damage, death, and debt they inflict on the country.

A generation ago, they wrote off the cities. Now it seems that, as far as they’re concerned, the whole country can just burn.
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I think you’ve hit on exactly the reason I find John Cole so addictive. AFAIK, he still is “pro-war” (in the abstract sense, in which I am “anti-war”), but he’s against “these wars”. They’re not making the US any safer. They’re not making Iraq or Afghanistan any safer. I think there’s a sense in which Bush is not a right-winger in the same way that Tony Blair wasn’t (isn’t?) really a left-winger or a socialist. I recently read Peter Singer’s “The President of Good and Evil” (much better than I expected, btw) which among other things makes the case that Bush doesn’t practise cutting back the state (he’s very pro Federal interference when it suits him) or lower taxes, etc. The wonder is that more people haven’t sussed that he’s an absurd incompetent hypocrite. There are plenty of reasons for the left to hate him (his record of executions, the idiocy of his right-to-life position, especially concerning stem cell research, his unfair tax system, his eagerness for war), but that more on the right don’t (pro-big government, pro-pork barrel, not funding the military or accepting their expertise, etc).

The Powerlines and Malkins stagger me. I can (sort of) understand writing propaganda if one is paid, but doing it for free (or freelance, as both make some money) is just wtf?

I’m mad. Plain and simple.

I am mad my party has descended into a swirling vortex of madness in which no one is accountable for anything, everyone is a hypocrite, and that no one cares if a policy or position is good or beneficial to the country, but whether or not there is some short term political advantage.

I am mad that the good aspects of the Republican party (respect for individual liberty, the belief in balanced budgets and sensible tax policy, free trade, etc.- you may not agree with those being good aspects, but I thought they were there) have been drowned out and been discredited for the next half century by the ramblings of mad men and religious nuts.

I am mad at myself for not listening to people prior to the war and instead followed this administration and the pigheaded cheerleaders in the press and the blogosphere. I should have known better. Read some of my old posts(pre-2004)- they are truly atrocious and really embarrassing.

I am mad that I defended the indefensible for too long.

I am mad that the Republican party now stands for torture, domestic surveillance, government secrecy, permanent detention, and the imperial presidency.

I am mad that political debate in the Republican party now amounts to little more than calling your opposition traitors and accusing them of treason.

I am mad that for the GOP, admitting a mistake and dealing with it is seen as weak, or cowardly, and that fixing mistakes are less of a priority than winning short-term political victories.

I am mad at a whole host of things, but most of all I am mad at myself. When I look at these folks, the right blogosphere in general, the Hewitts, the Malkins, the Powerline, the NRO, the Weekly Standard in particular, what I see are people who either have not learned a damned thing in the past few years or whose loyalty to a political party is so great that they don’t care.

I think a little shrill is warranted, and I think anything less than shrill is not adequate attonement for my past transgressions. These folks need to be stopped. They need to be discredited, the Republican Party needs to be completely and wholly destroyed and built back up from the bottom up.

My only concern regarding the complete destruction of the Republican Party is the chance that the Democrats might become just as arrogant and corrupt as the Republicans are currently. The only thing that assuages these concerns are the historical record of the Democratic Party being the biggest enemy the Democratic party has, and that I have a hard time believing the Democrats can become as bad as the Republicans. They will turn on themselves before it gets to that point.

I know this little rant does not explain the underlying question you were asking, but it might help to explain where I am now politically. I am mad at myself and the GOP, and I think I have every right to be.

If you are interested in exploring the psychological makeup of these people you might want to look at the free, online book by psychologist Robert Altemeyer.

His work was the basis of John Dean’s recent book “Conservatives without Conscience”. He has now summarized his 40+ years of research himself. Here’s the link:
The Authoritarians

The part that seems relevant here is how this type needs to believe in the ideology that they follow and that appeals to logic or facts or anything else will fail.

He has also discovered that those who are not as strongly attached to their leaders tend to become more moderate as they are exposed to a wider variety of experiences and opinions.

As for the hawks that have now begun to criticize their fearless leader, it is hard to tell whether they have changed their fundamental world view or are just unhappy with the way the policy is being carried out. Many of them may also be repositioning themselves so that they can stay in the pundit business when there is a new party in control.

Some may also be in the process of rewriting their internal history so that they don’t have to accept their own prior ideological blindness. Lying to oneself is a very strong protective function.

There’s an additional factor at work with conservative bloggers, I think: the Bush administration went to war, more or less, in their names and justified by their creeds. The left-wing pro-war contingent has always had an imaginary war in its head, starting off with “never mind what Bush says, this is why I want war”-type foundations. But for people like John, the campaign began with things they actually do believe as justifications, which made judging it a very different matter. Someone like Thomas Friedman presumably doesn’t care very much one way or another whether the war makes any sense in limited-government, conservatively-interpreted-constitutional terms, because that’s not his thing. To someone like John, it matters a lot.

The specifically un-conservative aspects of the war drag the whole thing closer for self-professed conservatives, making it more likely that they will end up actually rejecting their conservatism in favor of a conservative-labeled imperialism, or rejecting the administration for the sake of their principles. Ongoing denial of the problem is always possible, of course, but harder in that position.

Hi Mr. Cole,

“I am mad that I defended the indefensible for too long.

I am mad that the Republican party now stands for torture, domestic surveillance, government secrecy, permanent detention, and the imperial presidency….

I am mad at myself and the GOP, and I think I have every right to be.”

Are you not also ashamed, sir? Even those of us who have not defended these indefensible national policies are mortified.

“My only concern regarding the complete destruction of the Republican Party is the chance that the Democrats might become just as arrogant and corrupt as the Republicans are currently.”

Your concern is valid. We have had Democratic Party arrogance and corruption as well. But that doesn’t justify these policies, created and pursued in our name by the Republican Party, to the everlasting shame and detriment of our entire nation.

Have a nice day,
Antti

This is sort of why I like Andrew Sullivan, in all of his messy glory. But also John Cole, because I think politics would be better if he was doing the arguing from the right.

There’s the whole phenomenon of being conned by your own. I’d guess that Cole’s anger is similar to the approbrium demonstrated here and elsewhere towards Nick Cohen and other Decents.

I think Bruce is on-point with the fact that many liberal hawks implictly and explicitly defend the ‘Good War’ they wanted, even though it was always a choice between Bush’s war and no war. But now? Well, it would be rude to suggest that liberal hawks’ incomes depend upon their remaining hawks, wouldn’t it? Just as a non-hack Hugh Hewitt is an unemployed one? I mean, what’s the fucking point of Powerline if Assrocket shows some signs of reason?

@7: It’s the ‘great disappointment’, just in politics not religion.

Antti @11,

no, shame on you. John Cole is an honourable man, full stop.

I am far to John’s left (though probably to the right of most people at CT). No matter: reasonable people can disagree on how to solve problems; there’s nothing we can’t discuss.

Whackjobs, though, should have no part in those discussions. Alas, these days it seems it’s whackjobs morning noon and night.

As for Mr Cole, perhaps I can best sum things up by saying that I respect him greatly, and look forward to the day when we can be opponents again.

Thank you, rea, for that beautiful and apposite quotation. The KJV is often simply beyond comparison in its power.

Back in the day I was unreasonably harsh with Cole. He stuck to his guns pretty stubbornly, but in a reasonable and non-dogmatic way, and proved to be able to change his mind, which doens’t happen very often. At that time I just did not believe that an honest conservative was a possibility, and I didn’t give him any benefit of the doubt, or a fair hearing.

Honest conservatives still aren’t thick on the ground, though.

‘What “left of center” pro-war blogger has failed “to accept that they were wrong and that their former comrades appear to be increasingly deranged”?’

All the bloggers at Harry’s Place.

“To bravely accept a battle that is unavoidable and inescapable, to wage it in the name of divine providence, to have confidence in it and its eventual blessing, to stand before fate with a pure conscience and clean hands, to bear all suffering and every test, never even thinking of being untrue to one’s historic mission, never wavering even in the most difficult hours of the final battle — that is not only manly, it is also German in the best sense of the word!”

–Joseph Goebbels, a few days before he blew his brains out.

Feel free to crib, wingnuts, cuz your writers suck:

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/unser45.htm

If we discount the out-and-out hacks, my entirely unscientific impression that apparently smart1 pro-war bloggers who were/are genuinely right wing have been much more likely than apparently smart pro-war bloggers who were (or who claim to have been) left of center to accept that they were wrong and that their former comrades appear to be increasingly deranged.

I’m not sure that’s true. I think that a lot of left-of-center pro-war bloggers in the United States changed their minds early enough that we no longer think of them as formerly pro-war (Josh Marshall, The Editors of The Poor Man, Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum are all in this category). Unless you count them all as right-of-center, which I suppose most US Democrats are by world standards.

What I do notice among anti-war bloggers on the right is that the later you flip, the angrier you are. Andrew Sullivan and John Cole flipped very late and they are very, very angry. That anger is useful.

There are other reasons to dislike Sullivan, and IIRC he was much nastier than Cole.

Good on John Cole. (The multiple smacking down of Antti for asking a fairly understandable follow-up question seems a bit sanctimonous though.) It’s always nice to be reminded that there are still honest conservatives (and libertarians) in the US, even if they are becoming an endangered species.

Actually, I think people who change over recently are always the angriest… the ones who flipped earlier are just tired by now.

“I just wish Schiavo had happened 6 months earlier so I would have voted for Kerry.” Jeez. Is there a course somewhere in thinking for yourself?

Engels @31,

The multiple smacking down of Antti for asking a fairly understandable follow-up question seems a bit sanctimonous though

As one of the sanctimonious multiple smackers-down, may I make clear that Antti has since made clear what he meant, and I was happy to see thereby that my criticism was, as we say, ohne Gegenstand.

Perhaps I am a bit oversensitive here. I must confess before the cadres that I too thought, back in the day, that Bush’s invasion of Iraq could have a positive outcome. I had thought it might be something like his father’s toppling of Noriega — in fast, fast out, little damage done except to the target. There is a part of me that thrills to see dictators get their comeuppance, and that the authors of their downfall should be their own masters only adds an ironic frisson. I was wrong, of course; should have paid more attention to Daniel.

Anyway, I hope Antti will understand that I did not wish to treat him with sanctimony, but merely wanted to defend a man with whom I probably disagree on most things, but who is manifestly one of the good guys.

Engels @38,

thanks; I am very glad to hear that. But may I say:

my reaction to your reaction was itself an over-reaction

Between my post and yours, this is starting to achieve a beauty most sublime.

And yeah, you’re right. Even my favourite gang of idiots in the world can take a very hard line against people who were pro-, or at least not anti-, war from the start. Given my own history, that hurts. It’s gratifying to see that somebody who, SFAICT, was never bamboozled sees the same thing.

I’m one of those who made the switch completely: started the war (and blogging) as a dedicated neocon nation-builder, now I’m an antiwar democrat with increasingly leftist leanings. My change occurred as a result of a stint in Iraq and all the crime, torture and lies that came with it. I’m back in Iraq now and it’s even worse than it was last time.

“reasonable pro-war bloggers”

Very funny. Haha.

By ‘apparently smart’ I don’t mean ‘seems to be smart but isn’t,’ I mean ‘appears to be smart as best as one can tell from their writings on the Internets.’

But is it possible for anyone to “appear to be smart” from what they have said on the internet? I am coming round to the view that the most one should hope for from a blog comments discussion is to come away with one’s temper and sanity intact.

right wing have been much more likely than apparently smart pro-war bloggers who were (or who claim to have been) left of center to accept that they were wrong and that their former comrades appear to be increasingly deranged.

I’m not blogger, but I am a foremrly “pro-war” guy who also always, until recently, considered myself on the “right” and I think I can give two big reasons for this.

1) Guilt. The Pro-War Left could at least assuage some guilt by thinking that, while they may have supported the “right” on this issue, they were not part of it and did not support it in general. We cannot do that. We supported this issue. We supported them in general. We helped make this disaster and its therefore a point of honor to stand up to the true nature of what we supported.

2)Personal Resentment. Most Leftists, no matter how pro-war, probably were never surprised/offended by being called a “Rino” or a “leftist”. Like many lifelong Republicans who were solidly pro-war right up to the invasion, I was absolutely astounded to find that the moment I began to question some of the Presidents policies – especially the policy to write all the violence off as the “last throes of dead enders” that required no serious re-evaluation of strategy – I got treated like I was a lifelong, anti-war, socialist, member of ANSWER.

3)Patriotic Resentment. We care more about our country than our party and these guys are RUINING our country on EVERY front. A lot of people say “Iraq was unwinable” but the truth is that we will never know because these guys made decisions almost designed to wreck any chance we may have had. They did more to objectively undermine this country than anyone else.

They deleted my first post – probably because I just restated what Mr. Cole had already said.

I’m no blogger, but I am a formerly pro-war Republican who had always saw myself as moderately “right” who feels strongly about this.

I would only add that, for some (at least for me) much of the passion comes from the reaction we got from the 28% to our initial second-thoughts. I had never before experienced anything like it. I know it’s immature but one gets mad after being called names for things one is not guilty of. But, truthfully, it’s more about guilt than anger – I never should have questioned the patriotism of others.

Personally, I think we should be absolutely furious with them, because they weren’t just wrong, they formed a cheer crew for the wrongness, an echo chamber for the less “reasonable”. And I don’t think you qualify as “smart” if you were taken in by the arguments for the war, no matter how nicely you write.