The Overton Window in action. Every window sometimes sticks, and every human has their sticking points. For example, Kos:
No, Bush won't cancel the next round of elections to remain in power. That's about the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I've seen in a long time. Some people on our side can be just as "out there" as the "black helicopter" crowd.
Well, sure. I mean, crazy talk is crazy talk: Did the Republicans steal Florida 2000 or get us into a war based on cherry-picked intel or lock US citizens up after grabbing them off the street or surveill everybody illegally?!
As if! Absurd! Beyond foily!
Guffaw! How did I ever buy into that stuff?! Boy, is my face red! Thanks for setting me straight, big guy! Can you ever forgive me for wandering off the reservation?
Of course, Lord Kos may turn out to be right. In fact, let's hope so. But one reason he might turn out to be right is that we're screaming bloody murder now, and not waiting and hoping for the best because maybe this time the Republicans will act responsibly.
Reminds me of a thread Sarah started, with bringiton in the window-sticking role, and others of the crew in the window-shoving mode.
Bottom line for me:
You can trust the Republicans to be Republicans.
And one thing we know: They always lower the bar.
UPDATE I skimmed a few hundred comments on the Kos's Guiness World Record meta post, and to me, it boils down to this: All the hard analytical and polemic work we've been doing over the past four or five years is finally coming together. We've laid the fire, built it, and now there's steam in the boiler. There's pressure now that nobody, least of all the Beltway Dems, are used to dealing with. Will the drivers turn and take us down the track? Nobody knows yet.
Take this little post as an example. I didn't have to link any of the talking points--we've all done the reading, and nobody needs the links anymore. (There are comments here and many, many on the Kos thread making the same argument I'm making, and using the same technique, although with different, but equally valid, talking points.)
So, I'm guessing that somewhere in the past month or so, a lot of people connected a lot of dots more or less at the same time and more or less in the same way (which is how it would happen: The blogosphere is a network, not like the top-down phone tree of the VRWC
).
I know my personal tipping point was the Democratic capitulation on Iraq funding, and I suspect many others "tipped" then, too. (Yeah, yeah, pragmatism. What I'd like is an example of when the Democrats handled relations with the base worse?)
To defeat your enemy, you have to build a model of how they're going to behave, correct? That's what we've been doing. And our model of how the Republicans are going to behave is based on past performance and detailed knowledge of their playbook. That's "ridiculous"? I don't think so. I really do believe we're connecting the dots with analysis and research, and that it's not correct to marginalize the work as "CT" (although there is CT going on, no question).
And when people connected the dots, the light bulb when on: WASF. So people are very angry, and people are very scared.
Now, at the top of the curve, at the A-list, I don't think fear and anger are the dominant emotions. Why would they be? They've got (some) leverage and experience (some) success. But the further down the long tail you go, the more likely those emotions are. (And you'd think Kos, and the Dems, would want to leverage those backbrain emotions, eh?)
In the Old Testament, one of the persistent themes in Psalms is ordinary people who can't even get a hearing. Their gripe is that that a judgment went against them, but that there is no justice system that they can even enter into for redress. That's how I feel. And, again, I suspect many others feel the same.
All I can say is that the situation feels volatile. Out of control government, alienated people--if it were the 60s, and if it weren't almost August, I'd say we were in for a long hot summer. As it is, we're in for a long slog until--"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray"--the Inaugural in 2009.
UPDATE Then again:
kos is preparing to be shredded for the viewing pleasure of several million Americans this week by the same guy who caused a major company to go candy ass over ten lousy ticket vouchers. "can you stop fighting over stupid shit?" doesn't seem like a lot to have to suggest.
Comment 1029....
UPDATE Revised to include yet more deathless prose.
UPDATE We also need to consider the likelihood, based on past performance, of Republican or administration trolls and sock puppets infiltrating the threads. Eh? (I'm thinking the FBI and the Black Panthers back in the day, here, not Thune and some bloggers.) I'm not sure how a community site deals with that sort of thing. Remember what happened to news groups? So far, Kos has held up remarkably well. Seems to me it's a problem for the admins, because if everybody's hunting down trolls, we get witch hunts and injustice. To me, a little heirarchy is preferable to that. Human nature in the mass is often not pretty.
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That's absurd.
Kos is right. It's as absurd as, say Bu$hie deciding that Congress can't file contempt charges against anyone in the Administration because Bu$hie controls the Department of Justice. And all the cops. And all the guns of the D.o'D.
Or, say for example hypothetically Bu$hie sneaking in a signing statement saying he can seize all the financial assets of anyone dissin' his War on Terra.
I mean, c'mon, get real he would never do that. I mean, really. Except, you know, if he felt he could get away with it.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Oh cool, a Tinfoil Hat thread! :)
(Not to be confused with a Tinfoil Hat Boy thread mind you.)
Anybody heard the latest that the new "Continuity of Government" manifesto we were kicking around last week has a provision in it to allow Homeland Security to seal bank safety deposit boxes? And require that they only be opened in the presence of a DHS officer who may confiscate contents deemed "potentially threatening" or somesuch?
This came up in an Orange thread (on another topic entirely; the refusal of the WH to let an Oregeon rep who is on Homeland Security to even look at this directive) the other day and occasioned many "OMG!" remarks.
Then somebody pointed to the fact that Snopes had debunked the "Gubmint to Confiscate Safe Deposit Boxes" story more than a year ago. But upon reading the Snopes a little more carefully they didn't actually say "No this didn't/can't happen", they just said "this is ridiculous." which is not, ahem, the same thing at all. Lots o' ridiculous shit happening lately.
So I dunno.
Just thought I'd join in here. Probably Woody's bad influence.
[passes likker bottle in WGG's direction]
When the going gets tough, the tough get foily!
As Gore Vidal says, "Conspiracy stuff is now shorthand for unspeakable truth." I've got my own sticking points, but that the Ratfucker types in the Bush administration will happily remove cumbersome bureaucratic obstacles like the rule of law so they can do whatever the Fuck
they want is not one of those points.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
its not tin foil, its a tesla coil..
The price is always what the market will bear, and we're beyond broke-Yeah I know its crazy but I'm worried sick about this SPP stuff,hey when you're losing just make a new playing field,right? If the WH thinks it has any weight at all in its "signing statements" (OOPS DICTATORSHIP-What elase do you call that?) then what is it capable of for a real touchdown-and they know they're desparate.Hope nobody hits that big red button...
I’ll Take A Hit, Xan, As Long As You’re
passing the bottle around, while I snap at Lambert’s dangled tin-foil bait.
Window-sticking role my sweet patootie.
I was up to nothing of the sort, merely trying to ever so gently suggest that not every single action out of BushCo is criminal. I’m sure it isn’t more than 97%.
OK, 98%.
That being said, the refusal of the White House to brief Rep. Pete DeFazio, an authorized member of Congress, on an Executive Directive is unconscionable, illegal, and unacceptable. Along with the Bush directives blocking Miers’ and Taylor’s testimony, this recent escalation of intransigence is past all understanding.
It may be, as suggested here and elsewhere, that this is part of some larger undertaking to overtly overthrow the government and impose martial law.
It may also be that this is part of a massive cover up, that the cesspool of BushCo’s malfeasance is so widespread that the lifting up of any corner will show the stink.
Or it may be that the only people left in this sad administration are the true believers, the Unitary Executive whackjobs who now unrestrained by any shred of common sense will simply reflexively shout “Executive Privilege!” to the most innocuous of requests.
Hard to know, you can’t use rational analysis to interpret irrational behavior.
I’m truly not as worried as some are about what these fools will try over the next 546 days. (Not that I’m counting.) As much harm as they’ve done, it was mostly pulled off with popular support in the 80’s and a compliant Republican congress. With his favorable in the 20’s, a hostile Democratic congress, what’s left of the Republican Party slowly backing away, the National Guard beyond pissed off and the Army broken, Bush can bluster and threaten all he wants but he’s no longer leading the country. The best he can hope for is to keep from getting run over by the stampede.
Probably.
Or maybe not.
Screw it. Common sense and calm analysis can only get you so far. Pass that bottle back around and rip him a new one, I won’t be a sticky spot on the window glide today.
Lambert, check the queue
The machine flagged my comment as spam again, and I know you don’t dislike me that much :-)
posted this on the thread
Markos, don't buy into the Right Wing frame. (0 /
Some red-cheeked wingnut elf (Noel Sheppard at "Newsbusters.org" no linky for him) sez:
The Right has used the "angry, vitriolic, unhinged, uncivil left" frame to define the whole movement for a long time.
It's bullshit, of course. For one thing you don't hear us using eliminationist rhetoric, calling for death and violence to "others".
And also, "hate" of brown people, be they muslims, mexicans, or african-americans is the Right Wing media's stock in trade. That is what "hate crimes" means, not just having angry feelings.
Angry? Sure. Do I use cuss words sometimes? Yep.
But Eliminationist? Racist? Authoritarian? Not so much.
The frame needs to be destroyed, not defended against.
But after all, Mr. Moulitsas is the Proprietor, and he can do as he sees fit. So it might be a good time to patronize some of the ""Long Tail" blogs. Those with less "visibility", but more open to "wacky" ideas like "the Bushies might do something grossly unconstitutional at some point", and more open to colorful language.
thank you
I realize reading big orange is like some Buddhist monk exercise in transcend-something. I mean I can look past the exxon ads and then utter nonsense, but this is the continuation of the lets-not-talk-about-election-fraud express. Yeah, I get it, I'm a big old kook cause I think something is rotten in DRE-land.
I feel a little better having stumbled across 'others' that read Markos exactly the same way.
By the way, you don't out CIA agents, falsify intelligence, sneak into hospital bedsides in the middle of the night, shred a bunch of emails, overtly write up crazy 'executive branch' laws like the "take your money if we don't like you", and the "i'm the decider of the whole damn country in case of emergency" law... You just don't do these things if all of the sudden messing with or canceling elections is out of the question.
Anyone remember the DHS stuff in '04 about canceling elections? Or how about this favourite.. “Anything we do to that effort, to that end, in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law.”
I can't understand how this is "the most ridiculous". I've got a much big list for the most ridiculous, like:
- "Rove will use his secret email to leak classified information to reporters and then shred all emails and correspondence and Congress and the media will just forget it ever happened" is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’ve seen in a long time. It could never happen.
Not to be diary pimping or anything, but NY Times blog quoted my take on the Feingold Overton window efforts to derail impeachment, which I am still puzzled by. I guess I'm not really one of the Johnny-come-latelys, but I certainly have been fitting together a whole lot more puzzle pieces lately.
bringiton, the queue...
... does't show your comment, and since you aren't registered, I have no contact form for you.
I'm concerned that if your IP address has been flagged, you might not be able to post at all. You can contact me at lambert_strether1 AT yahoo com if need be.
"The machine" doesn't flag spam, patterns in the text do, like the word v i a g r a in a headline, or 14 different links (generally to mortgage companies). And do on. No point discussing the algorithms in an open forum.
So, I don't know what you said... But I'd like to see, so I can refine the patterns yet again to avoid whatever the false positive was.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Vitriol and framing
1. Possibly, the Republicans don't even experience their Conservative
vitriol as vitriol -- it's like they've evolved to breath vitriol as if it were air, on a twenty year diet of Limbaugh. But pushback is new to them, so of course they experience that as vitriol. Classic "they can dish it out, but they can't take it." Wusses.
2. Shystee, I remember your rope pull metaphor. Kos is pulling the rope left, but it's up to us to help him pull the rope even more left.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Lord Kos' world
Over the last few years, Daily Kos has become the place where internet Democrats come to discuss political strategy. The purpose over there has become getting Democrats elected. They're not much interested in tinfoil-hat discussions, or even discussing alternatives beyond the standard Democratic wisdom. But if you want to know how to get those extra 25 votes out of Beaver Township that will make the Fourth District turn blue, Kos is the place to find out.
They don't care much for discussing the death of Constitutional government or the possibility of Captain Dubya suspending elections over there, because under such extreme conditions, politics as we know it becomes useless. Should Bush call off the 2008 elections, we've really got only two choices - roll over and play dead, or grab your rifle and head to the barricades. Markos Moulitsas and his associates need the status quo as much as anyone, for without it they have no purpose for existence, and become totally lost at sea.
...for the rest of us
Don't no don't now try to get yourself elected
If you do you had better cut your hair
Again, Shystee's tug of war metaphor
I'd rather that there's a place on the Internet, that I can read, where people who want to hash out issues about how to get Democrats elected can go. That's a Good Thing. (And yes, having Bush as President instead of the elected candidate did make a difference, and for much, much worse. Kinda like the distinction Freud made when discussing what a psychoanalytic cure was: Replacing hysterial misery with ordinary unhappiness.)
That said, there's an obvious tension, now being played out on Kos, when the inside baseball types, and the wannabes, turn out to be behind a large number of the readership (who are constituents). There's tension and energy there, and you would think a successful Democratic politics would learn how to harness it.
That said, it's not our job to turn Kos into something it isn't. And it is his site, after all. It is our job to pull Kos left.
And it's only pragmatic, too. Is the death of Constitutional government a winning issue? I think it is. People get this viscerally, and others having tyranical power over us really is a lizard backbrain stuff -- immigration is the only competitor.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
And now, the attacks on Kos begin
Assholes.
Pure harassment and time-wasting.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Um, Kos has been a target since
he was the first after Fallujah to call the contractors what they are, "mercenaries."
It's interesting to see the various ways attacks are made on Kos vs. those on Atrios. The elements are very much determined by the structure (tight at Kos, loose to the point of nonexistence at Atrios) of the respective pages.
Neither one is going to be brought down by a DOS attack, as has been done against others; or the variant of denial-of-service wherein trolls or bots are used to drive traffic to just short of the point where the site would fail, but so high that the owner's server charges go through the roof with no corresponding uptick in revenue.
There's probably a masters if not PhD thesis in an analysis of the factors involved, so I will leave the subject there so as not to impede anybody's academic progress. :)
I agree
So much of what I have said over the past six years has been considered "tinfoily" by my friends, and has come about. It's unwise not to push back, even if some things do not come to pass. The worse that can happen is that you're wrong, big deal. (OK - the worse that can happen is that you're right and the pushback didn't work.)
Agreed, Kos is a good thing
My point being that if Bush calls off the elections, then the entire political system in this country is blown to smithereens, and we've got nothing left except brute force. Therefore, I can understand the reluctance of the Kossacks to discuss a subject that, were it come to pass, make the very existence of Daily Kos irrelevant.
Back when I was going to Green Party meetings, there was a guy who would try to monopolize the floor with all sorts of tinfoil paranoia. We had another guy who'd cut him off with "Fuckit, let's go to the bar then, 'cos if you're right there's no point in us being here to begin with".
...for the rest of us
Don't no don't now try to get yourself elected
If you do you had better cut your hair
Don't care much for the big-time A-list blogs
Too much political claptrap, and not nearly enough Reynold's Wrap!
Seriously, any person with an ounce of sense wouldn't put anything past this preznit and administration.
I wear my tin foil proudly... Mixter
Mixter: Mother. Wife. Daughter. Sister. Animal lover. Progressive. And all around hell-of-a-gal.
just playing devil's advocate, but why call them off?
whom does such action benefit? how?
elections are a wonderful pacifying force that makes it possible for CT to be shuffled off the stage in the manner that it is. people "know they are free" because we have elections. saying otherwise is the highest of folly, didn't i just cast my vote a short while back? etc. i'm as foily as they come, but i don't buy "bush will call off election 08." it's silly. bush isn't the one who would make that decision. the folks who are- they want and profit from the continued illusion of participatory democracy. so fiddling with it will remain in the margins. for the foily, but never 'major' enough to your average joe to make them take the idea seriously.
elections are a comforting prop, and even the worst dictatorships and totalitarian states have them. making them look legit to most is part of that. so it will remain here.
Because they can?
[Rimshot. Laughter.]
Seriously, that seems to be a motivating force for much that they do. And I don't see how you can have a truly authoritarian regime with regular elections. Eh?
Perhaps an "election," 90% et cetera, or a plebiscite, but not (even) what we have, flawed though it is.
I agree it's foily, but again... Whenever we've said, they just can't sink any lower... They do. And it seems to me that's what all the arguments against this boil down to. The Department of No! They Would Never Do That! was set up for a reason, and has turned out to be far more busy than we ever dreamed.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
cui bono?
Well the only reason I am working with of a postponed election is because the current cabal is not eligible for any election races that occur in 2008. Maybe they are interested in extra-innings?
Maybe the heir apparents are not 'down with the sickness'. Maybe their golden boy McCain isn't going to win it for the corpomilitaryindustrial thinga-ma-jig, and so they are thinking of a "what-if" plan C.
I never said call off an election, but certainly postpone it or some event that would allow for a illusionary election at a later point. I don't think they got the next one rigged, I don't think they got their next lackey found. Maybe Hilary is more of the same (tm) but they see the curtain falling on their hellish-opera.
Not so much a plan as the idea is "on the table"
And, note well, the ground was already prepared by DHS back in 2004.
In any emergent conspiracy, a certain amount of improvisation necessarily takes place....
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi