Last November the FBI served a National Security Letter (NSL) on the electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)filed suit to force them to withdraw the NSL. The EFF reports that the FBI has been forced to withdraw the NSL and the gag order, permitting the EFF to describe the illegal actions of the FBI.
The gag orders accompanying such NSL's on libraries have no effective function beyond preventing the libraries and the targets of the NSL's to fight back against FBI overreaching. They are a totally administrative power given to the FBI designed to prevent negative publicity and Court challenge. The recipients of such a letter can't even discuss it with their congressional representatives.
This is just another panicky reaction to 9/11 by irrational frightened Republicans who feel powerless when someone is permitted to disagree with them. It is also a violation of the Constitution, but with the way the conservatives have packed the federal judiciary with their fellow frightened rats, it may take a generation for the courts to begin to properly enforce the Constitution. Roberts, Thomas and Scalia need to go, and the judiciary needs to be cleaned out of members of the Federalist Society. They are a special interest who represent only themselves to the detriment of the American people and the U.S. Constitution.
The failure of this NSL letter and the gag order is another victory for America and the Constitution. We need more of them.
Showing posts with label Right Wing Authoritarians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Right Wing Authoritarians. Show all posts
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Friday, November 09, 2007
Why scaring voters leads to electing right-winger extremists
Amanda Marcotte presents an excellent post that explains the psychological reaction of many voters that leads them to vote for right-wing authoritarian leaders. She is responding to an earlier post by Matt Zeitlin in which Matt criticizes the recent book by Susan Faludi The Terror Dream in which she explains the American overreaction to 9/11 as a "Hypermasculine retributive and protective identity to cover up for the shame of being penetrated by foreign Others." (He later translates that to mean that that the pro-war individuals were feeling threatened so that they attacked the nearest target to cover up that feeling of insecurity.) Matt's big argument is that Ms. Faludi's thesis is unfalsifiable.
First, let me say that I have not read Ms. Faludi's book. While I can see its interest, if I were to set it on the stack of "Waiting to read" it would have to be placed in my coffin to read after my funeral because I know I will never get to it before then. But I'm not writing here about Ms. Faludi's book. I'm writing because Amanda presented a psychological theory that is new to me, and which seems quite fascinating. It is called Terror Management Theory.
Amanda counters Matt's complaint by saying
I would also argue that in his article, Matt confused two levels of analysis. He states that we can never know exactly what thought and emotional processes led individuals like Peter Beinart or Paul Wolfowitz to support the war in Iraq. That is an individual psychological point of view, and would take long terms of individual psychoanalysis to tease out. Amanda is not looking at individual psychology. She is using social psychology - the discipline of understanding how individuals in groups act. That is a realm of psychology which does present and test truly scientific - falsifiable - theories of behavior. Terror Management Theory is one of those theories.
Terror Management Theory (TMT) is based on the theory from Existentialism that describes the human being as the only existing animal which is aware of its own impending death. Amanda describes TMT thus:
It also strongly suggest that unscrupulous politicians will offer themselves as all knowing and all-powerful leaders to protect the frightened populace. (This is clearly what Giuliani is doing as he tries to wrap himself in the mantle of the Mayor who led New York on 9/11.) In fact, it even leads to a prediction that someone like Rudolph Giuliani who desperately wants that authoritarian leadership position and finds it slipping away because there has not been a recent enough terror incident may very well cause one to occur - the so-called October Surprise.
Essentially the argument is that in a time of terror, the emotional brain will trump the rational analysis of the thinking brain. History has demonstrated this, but TMT provides laboratory evidence of the effect. TMT also has a lot of implications about how early childhood trauma, abuse and lack of family stability could create a higher percentage of criminals and anti-social unreliable people. This has a lot of fascinating social implications as well as political ones.
[*] It occurs to me that Iranians have complained mightily (and justifiably) about how the CIA and British Intelligence engineered the coup in 1953 in which the elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown and replaced by the Shah.
OK. So the U.S. changed the Iranian head of government at that time. The Iranian students had much the same effect on America when they used the kidnapped Embassy staff to cause President Jimmy Carter be defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan's election led many of the current Republicans running the American government (and urging an attack on Iran) to reach their current levels of power.
Iran and America have been interfering with each other for a long time. Maybe the lesson to both nations is that it is always a bad idea to change to government of another sovereign nation.
First, let me say that I have not read Ms. Faludi's book. While I can see its interest, if I were to set it on the stack of "Waiting to read" it would have to be placed in my coffin to read after my funeral because I know I will never get to it before then. But I'm not writing here about Ms. Faludi's book. I'm writing because Amanda presented a psychological theory that is new to me, and which seems quite fascinating. It is called Terror Management Theory.
Amanda counters Matt's complaint by saying
Faludi's book isn't about the plans to invade Iraq, but about the formation of the anxieties that fed the propaganda effort. There are books about the plans to invade Iraq; I don't see why insisting that all books be on that. The anxieties that made us easy to propagandize to is a perfectly legitimate thesis for a book.So if you want to focus on the anxiety that made large blocks of the voting public buy into bellicose and unrealistic lies and misinterpretations of facts to support the war in Iraq, then a discussion of anxiety is exactly what you want to do.
I would also argue that in his article, Matt confused two levels of analysis. He states that we can never know exactly what thought and emotional processes led individuals like Peter Beinart or Paul Wolfowitz to support the war in Iraq. That is an individual psychological point of view, and would take long terms of individual psychoanalysis to tease out. Amanda is not looking at individual psychology. She is using social psychology - the discipline of understanding how individuals in groups act. That is a realm of psychology which does present and test truly scientific - falsifiable - theories of behavior. Terror Management Theory is one of those theories.
Terror Management Theory (TMT) is based on the theory from Existentialism that describes the human being as the only existing animal which is aware of its own impending death. Amanda describes TMT thus:
Basically, it's the theory that human beings have a lot of tropes and tools to block the fear of death, and they carefully use scientific research to figure out what those are. A standard TMT experiment involves giving people a writing assignment, where half are told to write about something like hanging out at the park and the other half are told to write about their own deaths. And then they measure how the death group compares to the non-death group in terms of attitudes.One experiment that Amanda describes looks at misogyny and terror.
The research is demonstrating that reactionary politics are linked strongly with fear of death, with people getting more conservative, more Republican, and even more hostile to abstract art when they consider their own mortality. (Obviously, not all people, but these are averages.) And of this constellation of internal protections against fear of mortality, misogyny is pretty damn high on the list.
Working with the theory that women are marked as the "vulnerable" sex, and therefore that the threat of death will create more belief that women are more creaturely, more physical, more vulnerable and more penetrable (so that men can feel stronger, more impenetrable---Faludi's theory) [Snip]I find this research fascinating. It puts an explainable and in fact statistically predictable connection between one one side the kinds of cultural terror like Pearl Harbor, the assassination of a leader, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and 9/11 and as a response the readiness to abandon democracy and adopt the governmental forms and promises of authoritarian leaders. There is no question, for example, that the actions of the radical Iranian students who kidnapped the American Embassy staff in Tehran in 1979 and held them through the 1980 Presidential election effectively canceled out the normal reelection advantage held by Carter as the incumbent President and very probably permitted Reagan to with that eletion.[*]
In the series of experiments, they showed that reminders of mortality caused women to pay more attention to restricting calories later in the day (i.e., fit into the feminine ideal), overweight women became more self-conscious if reminded of their mortality, and even that women felt more positively about going to tanning booths after being reminded that they're going to die. The researchers were researching the relationship of sexual objectification to terror management, but we can easily see how the constellation of sexist demands on women to be beautiful, vulnerable, less smart than men, and domestic go together and create an entire coping mechanism that is manifested in culture. [Snip]
...the initial experiments are upholding Faludi and Ducat's theories about how vulnerability is projected onto female bodies so men can feel less vulnerable, and how a huge terror like 9/11 functions as a culture-wide reminder that we're going to die---and present a culture-wide enticement towards more misogyny. [Snip]
When women are marked as the vulnerable sex, and rallying to war is marked as a "masculine" behavior, then it's going to be tempting to deny one's own vulnerability by rallying to war and squelching femininity. It's clear to me that a lot of liberal hawks were willing to ignore reams of evidence that this war was a Bad Idea. You don't see that level of ignoring reason and evidence without strong emotional reasons, and I do think there's good, scientific evidence behind the theory that people's anxieties of sex and death are enough to cause them to retreat into a fantasy world and ignore reason (at least temporarily) when confronted with a trauma like 9/11.
It also strongly suggest that unscrupulous politicians will offer themselves as all knowing and all-powerful leaders to protect the frightened populace. (This is clearly what Giuliani is doing as he tries to wrap himself in the mantle of the Mayor who led New York on 9/11.) In fact, it even leads to a prediction that someone like Rudolph Giuliani who desperately wants that authoritarian leadership position and finds it slipping away because there has not been a recent enough terror incident may very well cause one to occur - the so-called October Surprise.
Essentially the argument is that in a time of terror, the emotional brain will trump the rational analysis of the thinking brain. History has demonstrated this, but TMT provides laboratory evidence of the effect. TMT also has a lot of implications about how early childhood trauma, abuse and lack of family stability could create a higher percentage of criminals and anti-social unreliable people. This has a lot of fascinating social implications as well as political ones.
[*] It occurs to me that Iranians have complained mightily (and justifiably) about how the CIA and British Intelligence engineered the coup in 1953 in which the elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown and replaced by the Shah.
OK. So the U.S. changed the Iranian head of government at that time. The Iranian students had much the same effect on America when they used the kidnapped Embassy staff to cause President Jimmy Carter be defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan's election led many of the current Republicans running the American government (and urging an attack on Iran) to reach their current levels of power.
Iran and America have been interfering with each other for a long time. Maybe the lesson to both nations is that it is always a bad idea to change to government of another sovereign nation.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Right-wing contradictory thought
Glenn Greenwald demonstrates how illogical and contradictory the ideas that pass for right-wing conservative thought really are. He starts with a like from Thomas Sowell's Townhall column today:
Then Glenn goes on to point out that American conservatives consider Jose Padilla guilty of planning a dirty bomb attack on America even when he was not charged and held with no attorney, no trial, and no hope of either just because our fearless leader said he was guilty. The finally gave up and never tried him on that. But he was guilty because Ashcroft and Bush said he was.
Why do right-wing conservatives think so irrationally? From Dr. bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians" Glenn quoted:
Conservatives really are that bad, both financial conservatives and religious fundamentalists. And they promote fellow "True-believers" rather then people with a demonstrated proficiency on the job, so that they can surround themselves with others who will not point out their sloppy and compartmented irrational thinking.
We all believe that people are innocent until proven guilty. Some on the left believe that they are innocent even after being proven guilty.Glenn then goes on to quote Sowell when he whined that Lewis Libby isn't really guilty, even though the jury determined that Fitzgerald proved to them he was.
Then Glenn goes on to point out that American conservatives consider Jose Padilla guilty of planning a dirty bomb attack on America even when he was not charged and held with no attorney, no trial, and no hope of either just because our fearless leader said he was guilty. The finally gave up and never tried him on that. But he was guilty because Ashcroft and Bush said he was.
Why do right-wing conservatives think so irrationally? From Dr. bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians" Glenn quoted:
A high [right-wing authoritarian] can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory and widely refuted ideas rattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it. . . .The guys running our foreign policy right now are this kind of irrational, illogical authoritarians. Look at that description again. "...sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and -- to top it all off -- a ferocious dogmatism...."
Research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and -- to top it all off -- a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.
[Emphasis mine - Editor WTF-o]
Conservatives really are that bad, both financial conservatives and religious fundamentalists. And they promote fellow "True-believers" rather then people with a demonstrated proficiency on the job, so that they can surround themselves with others who will not point out their sloppy and compartmented irrational thinking.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
TSA reports of terrorist 'tests of security' are lies
Heard the one about the fake ice packs that were filled with clay and wrapped in duct tape? Here are the facts:
It kept them competitive during the Cold War, and now that the Communists have decided to stop being the Republican boogymen, they are searching desperately for a new set of fears to feed the public. Apparently the terror alert color codes didn't work that well. That is the main function of the Department of Homeland Security - to scare the public and make Republicans electable over competent politicians.
The media is delighted to help them.
Be afraid, people, be afraid - of what the right-wing authoritarian Republicans will do to America. Today's America is a lot less free than the one we had in the year 2000, and it is the Republicans who have brought that.
The TSA bulletin said the ice packs were covered in duct tape and had clay inside of them.But...but... this was from an official TSA Security Bulletin! Yeah, and here is what the local TSA official in San Diego had to say about that:
Sanfilippo said they weren't covered in duct tape and didn't have clay inside of them. “It is a little bit off,” he said of the bulletin.
The chief said a Harbor Police officer found what appeared to be hardened old gel that had seeped out of the ice packs and dried, leaving a clay-like substance around the outside edge of the pack.
“We get these [bulletins] all the time,” he told the Union-Tribune. “Almost all the time they prove false.”Folks, the Republicans are in political trouble, and they damned sure can't run on their competence running government. But they can do everything possible to scare the public and then say "We are the only ones tough enough to protect you. Keep us in office."
It kept them competitive during the Cold War, and now that the Communists have decided to stop being the Republican boogymen, they are searching desperately for a new set of fears to feed the public. Apparently the terror alert color codes didn't work that well. That is the main function of the Department of Homeland Security - to scare the public and make Republicans electable over competent politicians.
The media is delighted to help them.
Be afraid, people, be afraid - of what the right-wing authoritarian Republicans will do to America. Today's America is a lot less free than the one we had in the year 2000, and it is the Republicans who have brought that.
FOX's Bill O'Goebbels does it again
FOX's premier propagandist and master of "The Big Lie", Bill "O'Goebbles" O'Reilly compared Daily Kos to Capone, Mussolini. Media Matters for America describes the event.
Strange. Whenever I see the master propagandist, O'Goebbels, of the Republican Ministry of Propaganda (other wise known as FOX) I get a mental picture of him happily unloading people from cattle cars and sending them into a camp through a gateway that has a sign over it. The sign, translated from the German, says "Work Makes you Free."
[If most Americans weren't too young to remember the pictures of the sign in German that said "Arbeit Macht Frei", today's Republican Party would not exist, and Bill O'Reilly might have to work for a living if he were out of prison.]
Strange. Whenever I see the master propagandist, O'Goebbels, of the Republican Ministry of Propaganda (other wise known as FOX) I get a mental picture of him happily unloading people from cattle cars and sending them into a camp through a gateway that has a sign over it. The sign, translated from the German, says "Work Makes you Free."
[If most Americans weren't too young to remember the pictures of the sign in German that said "Arbeit Macht Frei", today's Republican Party would not exist, and Bill O'Reilly might have to work for a living if he were out of prison.]
Friday, July 06, 2007
American conservatism is not traditionally "conservative"
Ezra Klein makes much the same point has has been made by Rick Perlestein. American's problems today stem primarily from the so-called "conservative" movement which is pushing its failed, very radical ideology. Ezra's point is:
If American conservatism is no longer "conservative," then what is it? This is the direct outgrowth of the failed Republican faux aristocracy which brought America into the Depression through its ignorance, greed and failure to act for the good of the nation if it cost them a dime. That group never forgave FDR for replacing them with a government more in line with the needs of a modern industrial nation when their greed brought us into the Depression and could not get us back out. Many of them flirted with and did business with their ideological kin, the Nazis, in the 30's. They resisted entry into WW II, but were happy to benefit when the U.S. remained the only industrially intact nation in the world after the War.
But they were not happy at being removed from power, and used the Cold War and the so-called Communist Threat as a club to frighten the nation and regain power in 1952. They hadn't taken over the Republican Party yet, so they got Eisenhower rather than one of their own as President in 1952. The racist Democrats of the South and the extreme conservatives such as the John Birchers and the McCarthyites were not enough, so they began putting together a so-called "conservative" ideology to justify their predations on society. The result was National Review, "Conscience of a Conservative" and the Goldwater movement, followed by Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and a whole host of so-called think tanks designed to build an ideology that justified their takeover of American government. The Southern Democrats were brought in by helping them to fight against Civil Rights, and formally were incorporated into the Republican party in 1972.
The purpose was not to be "conservative" in the sense of returning to better things in the past. The purpose was to return the natural American aristocracy - of which George W. Bush is a charter member - to power where they felt they belonged.
Conservatism is an unworkable ideology, useful only to bamboozle American voters into thinking that they don't need to pay taxes. The Reagan-Bush years were an effort to put their ideology into practice, but it was failing. Ross Perot called them on it, and since the right-wing propaganda machine was designed to attack Democrats, they were unable to get him in 1992, effectively electing Bill Clinton.
This infuriated the right-wing millionaire club, leading to the many manufactured attacks on Clinton. It wasn't members of the ideological conservative movement who went after Clinton. It was members of the American right-wing self-appointed aristocracy like Richard Mellon Scaife who want an American playground where they can become even more wealthy and powerful.
Real conservatives are suspicious of the danger in making radical changes, and provide a brake on implementing overly radical social and governmental changes. American movement conservatives want to install the extremely radical conservative ideology, and like the Marxist-Leninist Communists in the USSR, will ride roughshod over anyone who tries to get them to slow down, to consider the effects of their attempts to install their radical proposals, and in fact will not accept people who are not true-believers.
Oddly enough, when compared with the radicals of the American conservative movement going back well before Goldwater, it is me who is the true conservative.
Today's Republican party is plutocratic, authoritarian, theocratic, racist, nativist, militarist, and imperialist, but hardly conservative except in the sense of being reluctant to reform entrenched abuses. You could throw rocks at random at the ten clowns who line up at the podia for a Republican Presidential debate and never risk hitting an actual conservative, though you couldn't avoid hitting a Reagan-worshipper. It's American conservatism that is no longer conservative, not merely George W. Bush.This is a good point to add to my earlier article What's wrong with conservatism and why are so many of us angry at Bush and the Republicans?.
That's too bad: the conservative impulse is just as necessary to a properly balanced political system as the progressive one.
[Underlining is mine - Editor, WTF-o]
If American conservatism is no longer "conservative," then what is it? This is the direct outgrowth of the failed Republican faux aristocracy which brought America into the Depression through its ignorance, greed and failure to act for the good of the nation if it cost them a dime. That group never forgave FDR for replacing them with a government more in line with the needs of a modern industrial nation when their greed brought us into the Depression and could not get us back out. Many of them flirted with and did business with their ideological kin, the Nazis, in the 30's. They resisted entry into WW II, but were happy to benefit when the U.S. remained the only industrially intact nation in the world after the War.
But they were not happy at being removed from power, and used the Cold War and the so-called Communist Threat as a club to frighten the nation and regain power in 1952. They hadn't taken over the Republican Party yet, so they got Eisenhower rather than one of their own as President in 1952. The racist Democrats of the South and the extreme conservatives such as the John Birchers and the McCarthyites were not enough, so they began putting together a so-called "conservative" ideology to justify their predations on society. The result was National Review, "Conscience of a Conservative" and the Goldwater movement, followed by Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and a whole host of so-called think tanks designed to build an ideology that justified their takeover of American government. The Southern Democrats were brought in by helping them to fight against Civil Rights, and formally were incorporated into the Republican party in 1972.
The purpose was not to be "conservative" in the sense of returning to better things in the past. The purpose was to return the natural American aristocracy - of which George W. Bush is a charter member - to power where they felt they belonged.
Conservatism is an unworkable ideology, useful only to bamboozle American voters into thinking that they don't need to pay taxes. The Reagan-Bush years were an effort to put their ideology into practice, but it was failing. Ross Perot called them on it, and since the right-wing propaganda machine was designed to attack Democrats, they were unable to get him in 1992, effectively electing Bill Clinton.
This infuriated the right-wing millionaire club, leading to the many manufactured attacks on Clinton. It wasn't members of the ideological conservative movement who went after Clinton. It was members of the American right-wing self-appointed aristocracy like Richard Mellon Scaife who want an American playground where they can become even more wealthy and powerful.
Real conservatives are suspicious of the danger in making radical changes, and provide a brake on implementing overly radical social and governmental changes. American movement conservatives want to install the extremely radical conservative ideology, and like the Marxist-Leninist Communists in the USSR, will ride roughshod over anyone who tries to get them to slow down, to consider the effects of their attempts to install their radical proposals, and in fact will not accept people who are not true-believers.
Oddly enough, when compared with the radicals of the American conservative movement going back well before Goldwater, it is me who is the true conservative.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Does the Democratic Party have an advantage on-line?
The Washington Post has a story today (on the front page, interestingly) that confirms what those of us who are interested in politics and spend a lot of time on the Internet have already suspected. The Democrats currently have an advantage over Republicans on the Internet.
More interesting is the speculation in the story about why the Democrats/Progressives have this advantage. To me this leads to the question - is the advantage systemic or is it just temporary until the conservatives/Republicans catch up? I'll address that further down. Think about the reasons for such a advantage as you read this:
Unfortunately for the Republican conservatives, the Internet is full of people who disagree with others in various levels of civility. Democrats and Progressives thrive on such disagreements. Those lively discussions are what allows communities to develop on-line such as Daily Kos.
So, yes, I think the problem that Republicans/conservatives have with the Internet really is systemic. If they ever adapt successfully to the Internet, they will become Democrats. Cantankerous, disagreeable Democrats, surely, but what's new about that? The difference is that they will have lost their group identity as conservatives. They will have lost whatever it takes to present a unified, cohesive face to the rest of the world.
It's not so much that the Democrats have an advantage as that the conservatives are limited in ways the prevent them from using the bottom-up structure of the Internet. The angry, ethnocentric and isolationist right-wing organizations are a danger to democracy, but the Internet is an arena in which their group cohesiveness cannot be maintained if they are to take advantage of the political power of the masses of people. Cohesive groups give conservatives and Republicans political power. Using the Internet successfully will require that they abandon that very cohesiveness and certainty that has worked so well for them recently. I don't think they can do that successfully.
Their response is going to have to be to try to destroy the Internet. But that is for a later discussion.
More interesting is the speculation in the story about why the Democrats/Progressives have this advantage. To me this leads to the question - is the advantage systemic or is it just temporary until the conservatives/Republicans catch up? I'll address that further down. Think about the reasons for such a advantage as you read this:
Republican [--] Michael Turk, who was in charge of Internet strategy for President Bush's 2004 campaign -- puts the problem his party faces more bluntly: "We're losing the Web right now."I suspect that the Republican Party hierarchical model is what limits them. The conservatives tend to be Right-wing Authoritarians, and one of the characteristics of such people is that they are uncertain unless an authority gives them permission to hold certain beliefs. They gather in groups to hear the accepted positions, and then share those opinions among themselves. Since such people have an us-and-them view of people, any disagreement has to come from "them."The most recent figures from Nielsen/NetRatings provide one measure of the gap. Looking at the Web sites of presidential candidates from the two parties, it found that former senator John Edwards's site had about 690,000 unique visitors in March, when the Democrat's wife, Elizabeth, announced that she had a recurrence of cancer. That was more than the combined number of visitors to the sites of the three leading GOP contenders, Rudolph W. Giuliani (297,000), Sen. John McCain (258,000) and Mitt Romney (76,000).
There are other measures as well. No Republican comes close to matching the popularity of another Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, the social-networking triumvirate. The Democrats are ahead in the online money race. The top three Democrats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama and Edwards, amassed more than $14 million over the Internet in the first three months of 2007; in contrast, the top three Republicans, Giuliani, McCain and Romney, collected less than half of that, $6 million. Furthermore, ABC PAC, the conservative fundraising site, has raised $385 so far for Republican presidential hopefuls; Act Blue, its liberal counterpart, has collected about $3 million for Edwards alone.
One reason for the disparity between the parties, political insiders say, is that the top Republican candidates are not exciting voters the way the Democratic front-runners are. Another is that it takes a certain level of technical skill and understanding to be an online strategist, and Republicans admit that "the pool of talent in the Democrats' side is much bigger than ours."
But an underlying cause may be the nature of the Republican Party and its traditional discipline -- the antithesis of the often chaotic, bottom-up, user-generated atmosphere of the Internet.
"We've always been a party of staying on message," All said. "It's the Rush Limbaugh model. What Tony Snow says in the White House filters down to talk radio, which makes its way to the blogs."
Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that in recent months has been advising Democratic members of Congress and their staffs on how to take full advantage of the Web, argues that the culture of Democrats is a much better fit in the Internet world.
"What was once seen as a liability for Democrats and progressives in the past -- they couldn't get 20 people to agree to the same thing, they could never finish anything, they couldn't stay on message -- is now an asset," Leyden said. "All this talking and discussing and fighting energizes everyone, involves everyone, and gets people totally into it."
If conservatives have mastered talk radio -- with Limbaugh as the undisputed king of the AM dial -- those on the left hope to achieve the same dominance on the Internet.
Unfortunately for the Republican conservatives, the Internet is full of people who disagree with others in various levels of civility. Democrats and Progressives thrive on such disagreements. Those lively discussions are what allows communities to develop on-line such as Daily Kos.
So, yes, I think the problem that Republicans/conservatives have with the Internet really is systemic. If they ever adapt successfully to the Internet, they will become Democrats. Cantankerous, disagreeable Democrats, surely, but what's new about that? The difference is that they will have lost their group identity as conservatives. They will have lost whatever it takes to present a unified, cohesive face to the rest of the world.
It's not so much that the Democrats have an advantage as that the conservatives are limited in ways the prevent them from using the bottom-up structure of the Internet. The angry, ethnocentric and isolationist right-wing organizations are a danger to democracy, but the Internet is an arena in which their group cohesiveness cannot be maintained if they are to take advantage of the political power of the masses of people. Cohesive groups give conservatives and Republicans political power. Using the Internet successfully will require that they abandon that very cohesiveness and certainty that has worked so well for them recently. I don't think they can do that successfully.
Their response is going to have to be to try to destroy the Internet. But that is for a later discussion.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Taunts from a "Christian" Terrorist
The Bush administration and American conservatives generally keep trying to make the point that the GWOT (Global War on Terror) against the so-called "Islamofascist Terrorists" is the new world war, on par with and more dangerous than the Cold War with the USSR and Soviet Communism.
Really?
How is Osama bin Laden any different from the Fundamentalist "Christian" organization called "the Army of God" which sends out terrorists to kill because the rest of America will not accept their demands that abortions be criminalized? Cliff Schecter points out how one of "the Army of God's" anointed terrorists taunts his victims from his federal prison cell. Several points need to be made to counter the propaganda and misinformation put out by the Bush administration, by the conservatives, and by the Republican political media led by FOX TV "news."
America is not involved in "World War IV." The "West" is not fighting a unified Islamic enemy. There is no "unified Terrorist enemy!" And terrorism is a tactic used by small groups who are trying to disrupt a state, but it is a tactic used by bandit forces rather than by armies.
Fighting bandits and pirates has been a constant problem for nations for centuries, but it is not war. When the early American government put down Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, they were not fighting against armies. They were using the military to dispatch rioters or their equivalent.
OK. Eric Rudolph set bombs to support the Army of God in its fight against abortion. He was a terrorist, but he was not a soldier. Of course, Rudolph was not as successful by the standards of body count as another American terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, either. Both were terrorists, however, and neither was Islamic. Neither were soldiers, and neither was involved in a real war. Mohammed Atta was a terrorist, and when evaluated by body count, he was a lot more successful than either Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh. Atta was not a soldier either, however. He was just another terrorist - a violent bandit - who happened onto a tactic that was unusually successful in killing a large number of people.
There are terrorist organizations around the world. In fact there are quite a few. The U.S. State Department puts out a list of known terrorist organizations by country which can be reviewed here. There are also National Liberation organizations that use terrorist tactics. They range from Communist to right-wing organizations, and would include the liberation fighters in Nicaragua, which were supported by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North.
Wikipedia offers a much more comprehensive (but less reliable) "List of non-governmental organizations accused of using terrorism." The list of categories of such organizations is interesting.
So why are the American right-wing propagandists (including the Bush administration and FOX "News") working so hard to emphasize the religious aspects of Middle East terrorism? I have to conclude that it is much easier to justify a preemptive war started by America on religious grounds than on political ones.
Armies are not very good at chasing down bandits. Ask Black Jack Pershing after he came back from his fruitless effort to chase down Pancho Villa in Mexico before WW I. But increased Intelligence and Special Operations efforts are covered by classification and don't get much Press, except when they fail. Successes remain classified. So how does a right-wing politician look tough without sending in another division? He doesn't.
Defining the battle against those who attacked America as Islamo-fascist terrorists allows the right-wingers to blame all Muslims. That fits their racial prejudices as well as making the problem into a religious one. It justifies turning America into an Armed Camp and making everyone afraid, so that those who fear can elect the right-wingers.
The fact is Eric Rudolph and the conservative right-wingers like Rudolph Gulianni are very similar. They need each other, and they react to social problems similarly. Pass a law against what they oppose and set up a police force to enforce that law without exceptions. Remove all limitations on how the people being investigates are treated, and don't worry too much if a few innocents get hurt in the process. Both Eric Rudolph and Rudolph Gulianni sell themselves as being tough on the "bad guys." The real difference is that Eric Rudolph was using violence to try to change the law, while Rudolph Gulianni would prefer to change the law first, then use it to justify violence.
Those of us on the outside of this system need to remember - just don't ask either Eric or Rudy who the "bad guys" are. You'll quickly find yourself on their list, just for questioning them. The "bad guys" are their enemies, not our enemies. Remember that and watch your back - and watch for abandoned packs in public places.
Really?
How is Osama bin Laden any different from the Fundamentalist "Christian" organization called "the Army of God" which sends out terrorists to kill because the rest of America will not accept their demands that abortions be criminalized? Cliff Schecter points out how one of "the Army of God's" anointed terrorists taunts his victims from his federal prison cell. Several points need to be made to counter the propaganda and misinformation put out by the Bush administration, by the conservatives, and by the Republican political media led by FOX TV "news."
America is not involved in "World War IV." The "West" is not fighting a unified Islamic enemy. There is no "unified Terrorist enemy!" And terrorism is a tactic used by small groups who are trying to disrupt a state, but it is a tactic used by bandit forces rather than by armies.
Fighting bandits and pirates has been a constant problem for nations for centuries, but it is not war. When the early American government put down Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, they were not fighting against armies. They were using the military to dispatch rioters or their equivalent.
OK. Eric Rudolph set bombs to support the Army of God in its fight against abortion. He was a terrorist, but he was not a soldier. Of course, Rudolph was not as successful by the standards of body count as another American terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, either. Both were terrorists, however, and neither was Islamic. Neither were soldiers, and neither was involved in a real war. Mohammed Atta was a terrorist, and when evaluated by body count, he was a lot more successful than either Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh. Atta was not a soldier either, however. He was just another terrorist - a violent bandit - who happened onto a tactic that was unusually successful in killing a large number of people.
There are terrorist organizations around the world. In fact there are quite a few. The U.S. State Department puts out a list of known terrorist organizations by country which can be reviewed here. There are also National Liberation organizations that use terrorist tactics. They range from Communist to right-wing organizations, and would include the liberation fighters in Nicaragua, which were supported by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North.
Wikipedia offers a much more comprehensive (but less reliable) "List of non-governmental organizations accused of using terrorism." The list of categories of such organizations is interesting.
- Religious terrorists
- Nationalistic terrorist organizations
- Anarchist
- Leftist, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyst, Maoist and Marxist
- Ethnic terrorists (including neo-Nazis and white-supremacists)
- Anti-Communists
- Cuban exile groups
- Issue-specific
- Others
- See also
So why are the American right-wing propagandists (including the Bush administration and FOX "News") working so hard to emphasize the religious aspects of Middle East terrorism? I have to conclude that it is much easier to justify a preemptive war started by America on religious grounds than on political ones.
Armies are not very good at chasing down bandits. Ask Black Jack Pershing after he came back from his fruitless effort to chase down Pancho Villa in Mexico before WW I. But increased Intelligence and Special Operations efforts are covered by classification and don't get much Press, except when they fail. Successes remain classified. So how does a right-wing politician look tough without sending in another division? He doesn't.
Defining the battle against those who attacked America as Islamo-fascist terrorists allows the right-wingers to blame all Muslims. That fits their racial prejudices as well as making the problem into a religious one. It justifies turning America into an Armed Camp and making everyone afraid, so that those who fear can elect the right-wingers.
The fact is Eric Rudolph and the conservative right-wingers like Rudolph Gulianni are very similar. They need each other, and they react to social problems similarly. Pass a law against what they oppose and set up a police force to enforce that law without exceptions. Remove all limitations on how the people being investigates are treated, and don't worry too much if a few innocents get hurt in the process. Both Eric Rudolph and Rudolph Gulianni sell themselves as being tough on the "bad guys." The real difference is that Eric Rudolph was using violence to try to change the law, while Rudolph Gulianni would prefer to change the law first, then use it to justify violence.
Those of us on the outside of this system need to remember - just don't ask either Eric or Rudy who the "bad guys" are. You'll quickly find yourself on their list, just for questioning them. The "bad guys" are their enemies, not our enemies. Remember that and watch your back - and watch for abandoned packs in public places.
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