Two things I don't care about: The Royal Baby and Anthony Weiner's sexting

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: I'm with Frank on this. I don't give a shit about the Royal Baby, other than to the extent that I care about human beings generally, because I loathe that silly family and stupid institution. As for Weiner, the way the media are reacting with a combination of prudish moralism, titillation, and hypocrisy almost makes me feel sorry for him. As it is, I don't care about the sexting, because I'd like to think I have a broad understanding of and appreciation for human sexuality. The problem there is the dishonesty, narcissism, and lack of judgment. I'm not sure that disqualifies him for mayor, but he does seem to be a shameless creep. -- MJWS)

I have no interest in the royal baby. In general, I have no interest in a royal family -- at least until the sons start killing each other in order to become king. To me, we had a war so we wouldn't have deal with this bullshit. And then when we created this country, we specifically didn't create our own explicit class of people who are better than the rest of us. It's all a big joke and people who are caught up in it really need to get a life.

The other thing I don't care about is Anthony Weiner's newest sex scandal. But I do care about how the Democratic ecosystem reacts to it. It isn't new, of course. We all know that when something like this happens to a Republican, they circle the wagons. Eventually, they may abandon the man (It's always a man!) in the middle of it. But they will assume the best and try to play defense. The Democrats are just the opposite—they have no loyalty at all. It doesn't matter if it's former IRS head Steven T. Miller or Shirley Sherrod or Weiner. Democrats might think that we should be understanding of the unnamed masses, but if it is a named person who is part of our team, they have to go.

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Thatcher gets no credit for ozone

By Frank Moraes 

There was a very interesting discussion on All In about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. I quite agree with what Chris Hayes says at the beginning of the clip below. But at one point, he asks Cass Sunstein if there is anything about Thatcher that liberals should applaud. Sunstein mentions the ozone layer: Thatcher and Reagan both pushed for the ban of the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Let's stop right there. (We might as well, he doesn't mention anything else that liberals might like about Thatcher.)

The reason that we got the ban on CFCs is that DuPont wanted CFC-11 and CFC-12 banned. Why? The patents were running out and they had brand new patents on the replacement compounds. So as usual, these great lions of conservatism were just doing what the corporations wanted. I assure you that there would be a stampede of Republicans calling for carbon taxes if it were to Chevron's and Exxon's economic advantage.

So no. Liberals should not give even the slightest bit of respect to the Rusted Out Iron Lady. In banning CFCs Thatcher was doing exactly what she did when she privatized state utilities: the bidding of the power elite. That's all she (or for that matter Reagan) ever did.

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(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Conservative answers for shootings

By Frank Moraes 

On Friday, I reported on the obsession of Wall Street Journal reporters Tamer El-Ghobashy and Devlin Barrett regarding how the shooter got through the security system at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was otherwise a good and informative article, but really: how did he get in? As I wrote, "This is a typically American approach to a problem: look everywhere but not at what is right in front of you."

Now we have the answer: he forced his way into the school. Before I heard that, I was pretty sure that was going to be the answer and I thought that would settle the issue. What an idiot I am! Of course it doesn't settle the issue. It puts the issue into sharp focus for conservatives: the answer is to put armed cops in every school. Check out the Fox News clip at the end of this segment on Up with Chris Hayes:

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Asshole extraordinaire Joe Walsh says double amputee Iraq War vet Tammy Duckworth isn't a "true hero"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A few weeks ago, Richard wrote that Illinois Republican Rep. Joe Walsh could be President Obama's secret weapon, suggesting that the president's team "follow [him] around with a camera and record whatever he says. Just wait until Walsh says something offensive and stupid, which won't take long, and hit the record button. They should then run the clips in a continuous loop in those communities Walsh has offended."

Well, how about offending the military, the day before July Fourth, and, well, pretty much offending everyone?

Though he never joined the military himself, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) disparaged his Democratic opponent's military service at a town hall on Sunday, saying that she's not a "true hero."

Walsh is running against Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee who lost both her legs in Iraq when insurgents hit her helicopter with an RPG in 2004.

The Tea Party freshman opened the Elk Grove town hall by arguing that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was reluctant to discuss his own military service in 2008, which made him a "noble hero." By contrast, "Now I'm running against a woman who, my God, that's all she talks about," Walsh said.

Let's put that more starkly:

Joe Walsh is a Tea Party Republican who, when acting didn't work out, embarked on a career in extremist right-wing politics. His ex-wife sued him for child support and he has come under scrutiny for various ethics violations.

Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, was an Army helicopter pilot who lost both her legs in combat. She has been the Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. She is married to a fellow Iraq War vet and serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard.

Yes, that's right, the armchair conservative extremist is saying the double amputee Iraq War vet isn't a "true hero." As if he has any fucking clue what heroism is, true or not.

And this isn't the first time this has come up. Back in March, Walsh told Politico: "What else has she done? Female, wounded veteran... ehhh." As if somehow that isn't enough. As if she hasn't followed up her time in the military, where she put her life on the line for her country, with public service in support of her fellow vets. You have to be some kind of reprehensible asshole to try to score political points this way.

(And consider the hypocrisy. Remember when Republicans went ballistic on Chris Hayes for even suggesting, in a thoughtful, self-critical way, that the word "heroism" is used in problematic ways?)

And it's not just Walsh. What his attack on Duckworth exposes, once more, is the general Republican use of the military as a convenient political prop. Republicans always say they support the troops, and are hence sufficiently patriotic, the implication being that Democrats don't, and aren't. Republicans always wave the flag to try to convince us of their love of country, the implication being that Democrats are anti-American (especially since a black man with an exotic past took the White House).

As guest blogger Rob Diamond wrote here a couple of years ago: "Republicans love to stand in front of the military. It is about time they try and stand behind us as well."

But they don't, and won't. To them, the military, vets and active servicemen and -women alike, is an exploitable tool with which to bludgeon Democrats, and the American people generally, even going so far, as we have seen so many times, as to put America's men and women in uniform, those who have volunteered for their country, in harm's way for political gain.

There's no respect there, nothing genuine, nothing sincere. If there were, do you think a chickenhawk idiot like Jow Walsh would actually ridicule the service of someone as noble, as courageous, as heroic as Tammy Duckworth?

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Remember this when Republicans try to bludgeon you today, and throughout the campaign this year, as always.

Happy Fourth of July.

A nation deranged by war, an empire collapsing

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Following up on my post from earlier today on Chris Hayes, military service, and the meaning of heroism, wherein I expressed complete agreement with what Hayes said about the use of the word "hero" and it's application to those who serve in the military, I want to bring to your attention an excellent piece at The Economist on the right-wing political correctness of the knee-jerk criticism of Hayes and, context and content ignored, what he said:

Calling "hero" everyone killed in war, no matter the circumstances of their death, not only helps sustain the ethos of martial glory that keeps young men and women signing up to kill and die for the state, no matter the justice of the cause, but also saps the word of meaning, dishonouring the men and women of exceptional courage and valour actually worthy of the title. The cheapening of "hero" is a symptom of a culture desperate to evade serious moral self-reflection by covering itself in indiscriminate glory for undertaking wars of dubious value. A more confident culture would not react with such hostility to Mr Hayes' admirable, though cautiously hedged, expression of discomfort with our truly discomfiting habit of numbing ourselves to the reality of often senseless sacrifice with posturing piety and too-easy posthumous praise.

Indeed, the adolescent vehemence of the reaction to Mr Hayes' mild confession seems to me to underscore the idea that America has become so deranged by war that anyone who ventures to publicly question any element of America's cultural politics of endless conflict will instantly mobilise indignant hordes who will bear down to silence him.

It's actually even more existential than that. What we're seeing in the derangement of the right, of which we have ample evidence (this is hardly an isolated example), are the death throes of the American Empire, militaristic jingoism being the right's knee-jerk response to the coming of the end of American hegemony.

The mature response, the response of a confident, progressive culture, is to welcome such change and to encourage American engagement with the new paradigm, to advocate an outward-focused approach that emphasizes engagement with the rest of the world not as dependents or enemies but as partners tackling common problems and working towards a common future.

Alas, there is no such maturity on the right, and the right-wing Republican Party is powerful enough to block the rest of the country from moving forward in a responsible manner.

Chris Hayes, military service, and the meaning of heroism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been meaning to way in on Chris Hayes's comments over the Memorial Day weekend on the nature of heroism -- and specifically this one:

It is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the word hero. Why do I feel so uncomfortable about the word hero? I feel uncomfortable with the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. And I obviously don't want to desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that has fallen. Obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is tremendous heroism. You know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that's problematic, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I don't think he is. In fact, I think he's absolutely right to question the ubiquity of the word "hero" as it is used with regards to military service.

But for one, the issue now isn't so much what Hayes said (and he has apologized for his remark, which he never should have done) but what his various right-wing critics are saying in response -- and, as you may know, it's gotten ugly. (Hayes made "a conscious effort to show respect to American troops, to highlight the depth of their sacrifice, and to convey as best he could how heavy a burden is carried by the parents, spouses, and children who are left behind (even as he remembered foreign innocents who have no day to commemorate their death in war." But the critics ignored both the context and the content of his comments, attacking him over a single line in a long discussion of military matters.)

And for two, Conor Friedersdorf has written a fantastic piece at The Atlantic not so much agreeing with what Hayes said, and on this I disagree with Friedersdorf (while I respect his open-minded, nuanced approach to the issue, I simply don't agree that "the vast majority of Americans in the military today" are heroes), but defending Hayes as a thoughtful, open-minded, self-critical commentator (of which there are far too few these days) and criticizing those knee-jerking right-wing critics who grossly misrepresented what he said and, as usual, used the occasion to make ad hominem attacks and denounce liberalism and pretty much everything else that isn't flag-waving jingoism.

I highly recommend that you read the whole thing, including the difficult questions he raises. Here's a key passage:

[I]t's worth asking what we want in an opinion broadcaster. Someone with whom we never disagree? Someone whose arguments never provoke or even offend us? For a fragile sort, maybe those qualities would prove ideal. But mature adults keen on useful public discourse ought to value different things. Even if we were to say, for the sake of argument, that Hayes' monologue was wrongheaded and offensive, it would remain the case that he 1) made sure to explicitly note that he wasn't disrespecting any soldier who'd fallen -- that is to say, he tried to anticipate which people might be needlessly offended, and to assure them that he meant something different than they thought; 2) he noted that he could be wrong; 3) he invited a panel of other intelligent people to disagree; 4) and when no one did disagree, the first thing he did was try to articulate the best counterargument that he could formulate. Unless you're a delicate flower looking for a broadcaster who never articulates any idea with which you're uncomfortable, what more can you ask from someone in Hayes' position?

Nothing. And it's worth noting that you don't find anything like this on the right, where opinion is expressed as propaganda and thoughtfulness is an utterly alien concept.