Blogs > Cliopatria > And Starring Dr. Strangelove as Joan Baez

Sep 28, 2010

And Starring Dr. Strangelove as Joan Baez




At the website of the American Spectator yesterday, former Bush I appointee Jed Babbin offered this remarkable historical comparison in apparent seriousness:"Obama's 2008 campaign was an anti-war campaign reminiscent of George McGovern's in 1972."(*)

That would be the George McGovern who in 1970 told the Senate that the United States was involved in"the cruelest, the most barbaric, and the most stupid war in our national history," laying the failure at the feet of his colleagues."Every Senator in this Chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave," he said."This Chamber reeks of blood."

When another senator approached McGovern after the speech to say that he had been personally offended by it, McGovern replied that it had been his intention to offend.

Barack Obama is totally just like that, isn't he? That's why combat operations have ended in Iraq, and there are no American combat troops left there -- just 50,000 soldiers.

Among the many indescribably strange dynamics of our political moment, nothing is quite as bizarre as the effort of the nationalist right to diagnose the disaster of the Obama presidency.

And so the unrelentingly hilarious Dinesh D'Souza concludes that Obama is an unadulterated product of African anticolonialism, sprung from the loins of Franz Fanon. The president who leads American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan -- and signs death warrants for Yemeni clerics, and god knows what else -- is ideologically driven"to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West."

And so a politician who shovels endlessfree cash at the financial industry is perceived to have just stepped off the train at the Finland Station.

I've been trying, with limited success, to identify historical examples of political movements that so entirely failed to see their opponents, or their political moment, for what they were. And I'm fascinated by the limits of the historical menu possessed by the nationalist right, which seems to have about four bogeymen to draw from: Hitler, communists, 1960s antiwar radicals, Hitlerian communist 1960s antiwar radicals.

The commander in chief of our $700 billion a year military embodies the legacy of anticolonialism and the American anti-war movement. This is proven by the fact that, in the tenth year of the American war in Afghanistan, he limited the escalation and extension of the war to a point somewhat short of the larger escalation and extension sought by his top generals.

It's like language itself fails in the downward spiral of late-imperial madness. (See also the"Ground Zero Mosque.") How hard can it become to simply call things what they are, and discuss the plainest realities in simple terms?

(* In context, by the way, Babbin's next sentence is even funnier.)



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Barry DeCicco - 10/4/2010

It just comes down to the Big Lie theory, combined with a level of Freudian projection never before seen.

Decorated combat veterans become cowards; TANG-boys become heroes.

Those who trash the country are patriots; those who try to prevent or repair the damage Hate America.

'Freedom' = presidential kinship, until a Democratic president is elected, at which time all of the limited government rhetoric is pulled from whatever dark orifice it was stashed.

'Religious freedom' becomes the freedom of a well-connected religious faction to use govermment powers to oppress others.

And so on.


And has been pointed out, the right doesn't criticize Obama for such shocking things as declaring that the President can order the death of a US citizen with no judicial interference. Because they like that, and hope to use it.


Chris Bray - 9/28/2010

A profoundly decadent ruling class that needs to be burned to ashes, pretty much. I'd like to see them destroy themselves without destroying my daughter's future, is the only problem.


Tim Rohde - 9/28/2010

The reason Republicans are misfiring criticism of the Democrats is simple: they have to avoid all the things that are ABSOLUTELY THE SAME about them. That means:
1. No critique of torture
2. No critique of the abuse of power
3. No critique of perpetual war

I'm sure these three have sparked the list of others on everyone's head and brought up some examples of exceptions.