“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
V.I. Lenin
Are there any limits to what can be said about political opponents? Should there be any limits? Does anything go, no matter who is the target? Are we all no better now than Karl Rove?
The moral reason we ought not to lie is because it damages others without justification, and that is as basic a human wrong as there is. The practical reason we ought not to lie is because it damages us; when we are caught, and liars always get caught, our credibility suffers and we can no longer participate in a conversation from a position of authority or respect. Telling political lies, as well as uncritically spreading them, is anti-progressive, un-liberal, and eventually ineffective in support of any agenda intended to improve the lot of humankind. It is an indefensible practice in political dialogue, and I have no patience for it.
What constitutes ethical reportage and discussion in the blogosphere? Are there standards? Should there be standards? What would those standards look like? Do they apply equitably, or can we employ baseless trashing of our perceived enemies while whimpering like little babies when it happens to those we support? If we employ a double standard, demanding that those who argue against us are despicable creeps when they make stuff up but insist that we can do it ourselves against those we oppose, do we really do ourselves and our cause any favors? Or do we so undermine our own credibility that no intelligent discussion can occur? If the latter, and I cannot see any plausible argument against it, who benefits? Not the downtrodden or the oppressed, that’s for damn sure.
When every crass lie and foundationless rumor is repeated and discussed as though it were real, on an equal basis with rational and logical positions, then every topic becomes suspect; when all sides are spreading baseless rumor and lies, then every commentator is seen as equally unreliable. When meaningful conversation is no longer possible, organized opposition to the established order also becomes impossible. I may be seen by some as old-fashioned with my rigid bottom-line morality and insistence on the societal value of gentlemanly ways, but I am absolutely certain that there is a depth to which we must not sink or all hope of progress is lost.
From the Clintons and Vince Foster to John McCain and his secret illegitimate black baby to Al Gore and the internet and Love Story to John Kerry and the Swiftboaters to every single public word that has ever come out of the mouth of George W. Bush, the VRWC
lies as it breathes, without heed or concern for the consequence beyond the destruction of others and their own immediate gratification. The only long term plan is more and bigger lies.
For the rest of us, in trying to disarm and defeat the forces of tyranny and oppression, the most powerful weapon we can wield is the truth. If you don’t subscribe to that principle, you will be my enemy – just so we’re all clear with each other. If we allow ourselves to sink to the level of those we despise, we cannot win anything; we will defeat ourselves.
So how is that battle with our own better selves going? Lately, not so well.
Larry Johnson, Michelle Obama, and a great big pile of nothing
Johnson, for reasons that remain opaque but in my experience is probably due to his being a self-serving moron, chose to spread around a rumor about Michelle Obama. Why anyone would ever spread such vile rumor about any other human being is beyond me. Why someone who holds themselves out as a supporter of freedom chooses to employ the tools of tyranny cannot otherwise be explained except by the basest and most venal of self-interest and greed. There is no “good” explanation.
And he has gotten what he wanted. Based on nothing at all, he has become the recipient of a seemingly endless stream of attention and discussion. The number of search engine hits are extraordinary, for any topic, but one based on the rumor of a rumor? Here’s a recent comment here at Corrente, assessing Johnson and his methods:
I’m convinced that Larry is convinced there is such a tape. It’s entirely possible he’s the victim of a hoax, but I don’t think he’s lying.
And that, apparently, is all it takes. For myself, I would want more evidence than that for a report of a new sale at WalMart. Third or fourth or fifth hand or whatever it is by the time it got here shouldn’t be good enough for anyone about anything. All that has happened in the Johnson affair is a pre-existing anti-Obama bias has been supported by a rumor spread by someone else whose pre-existing anti-Obama biases and selfish desires are in turn being supported by the unsubstantiated rumor mongering and/or lies of unknown others, anonymous sources whose own agendas and motives remain secret and carefully hidden away. But hey, it’s fun! Pass it on.
Is it lying? Oh, hell no; innocent victim, that’s our Larry; dumb as a stump he is, wholly unable to see that anyone who would claim to have a devastating tape of the wife of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee but who also is not going to release it until some later, more devastating time, is an agent of the VRWC; so is anyone who would lie about the existence of such a tape in the hopes that someone gullible and selfish and dumb as a stump would spread it around. That’s a tough one to figure out, for sure. That Larry, less sense than God gave a cabbage or he would have been able to suss that out. Or wait; maybe he isn’t so dumb; maybe he does know all of that and he’s spreading the rumor anyway. Maybe he is a liar. Or maybe he’s lying and greedy and dumb as a stump all at the same time, and only appeared to be smart and liberal because he’s been critical of Bush - in retrospect, not all that much of a challenge.
What is the cost for spreading VRWC propaganda? Diminishment of an innocent woman, no small thing in and of itself, not to mention untold damage to the political prospects of the only human being standing between the whole wide world and the unfathomable damage that will unfold from another four years of the Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Bush/VRWC. Surely a cheap price to pay for those website hits. Great work, Larry; nicely done.
In Re: Steve Diamond
I know his work, quite well. He’s very smart, well educated, and for a teacher he is soundly grounded in real-world experience. It is on balance good to have him in academia. On corporate, labor and international finance law, he’s very rigorous and relentlessly logical. With labor practices and labor negotiations, he is well-meaning and more than decent in his intention but inclined to take a harder partisan tone than is sometimes beneficial – forgivable, if occasionally irritating.
But like so many people, people other than me, he has a flaw; once settled on a position, he will go to any lengths to promote and defend it. This is fine, even admirable for a courtroom advocate and useful sometimes for a labor negotiator, but as a political analyst it leads to behaviors that in my mind are not defensible. That’s what has occurred here; he has crossed the line from hard criticism to baseless, unprincipled trumpery.
To understand what has happened and why it cannot be allowed to stand, we should take a couple of steps back up the narrative get the bigger picture. As Sarah has suitably exposed here, this cycle will give us more of the same character assassination tactics from the VRWC and they will be spread by the corporatist controlled M$M as they so recently did to Hillary Clinton. The base units for these smear campaigns are again the “independent” 527s and 501(c)3s and the like, providing plausible deniability for the candidate who is in fact using the technique.
One of those VRWC front groups has exhumed the body and what is left of the congenitally deranged mind of an old acquaintance: Herb Romerstein. In his teens, Herb was an ardent Stalinist but he soon turned away and by the time he got back from service in the Korean War he was as fanatical an anticommunist as ever existed. He made his bones as a staffer for a New York State legislature committee investigating the Great Communist Conspiracy, eventually denouncing as Communist agents his high school teachers, summer camp councilors, family friends and assorted acquaintances; essentially everyone he had ever known who had ever uttered a kind word about any progressive policy, dozens of innocent lives ruined.
His zeal was great enough to catch the attention of national figures, and he moved up the Commie Hunt foodchain in the 60s to become Chief Investigator on the Republican side for the US House Committee on Internal Security – the renamed successor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). More than anything Herb wanted to be the next Joe McCarthy, and he was every bit as loathsome a character. For his final VRWC reward, he was appointed by Reagan to be Head of the deliberately misnamed Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation, part of the United States Information Agency. Herb’s job there was actually to produce disinformation, with the intent to destroy the reputations of everyone seen as an enemy of the VRWC.
[One often repeated trope is that the current ideological struggle we are urged to “get over” by Obama and his supporters if that of the 60s; this is incorrect. The struggle is as it ever was, between Them As Have Got and Them As Have Naught. The objective of the VRWC is to roll back all progressive policies and return America to the pre-FDR glory days of financial domination by a 1% elite. The framing of the attack today is in the same terms used by the Plutocracy to attack the progressive policies of FDR, just substituting the conjured enemy’s name over time from Commie to DFH to Liberal and now back again to Commie.
[In one of the more interesting political twists of all time, it was fear of Communism taking hold in America during the Great Depression that drove FDR and his allies to institute the New Deal programs; FDR co-opted the very social changes being advocated by the American Communist Party and used them to promote and eventually stabilize a new American Middle Class as the dominant socioeconomic structure, the first time in history that was ever achieved. One could say, without any exaggeration, that the publically-voiced political deceits of the Communist Party (in private truth they were of course terrible totalitarians) saved American democracy – but that isn’t the way history is taught, is it?
[More on Herb and the great struggle is here, in a 1999 analysis written back when the New York Times actually employed journalists instead of VRWC hacks.]
Herb is one of those articulate, persuasive, socially functional paranoid delusionals who see Commie Sympathizers everywhere. He truly believes, and has spoken and written extensively about it, that Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest aide and advisor, was a Soviet spy who controlled FDR as an unwitting Soviet dupe; other Soviet spies he has helped “uncover” were J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant scientist and compassionate human being whose career was destroyed and health ruined by the false accusations, and the great and good liberal journalist and author I.F. Stone. Herb Romerstein is a very sick and very, very dangerous man.
Which makes him the perfect choice for participation in a new disinformation campaign from an outfit called America’s Survival Inc., originally funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Armstrong Foundation but supported exclusively from 2001 through 2006 by the Carthage Foundation – to the tune of $325,000. They’re big fans of Ron Paul (and David Vitter!) so plenty of badmouthing against Romney and McCain, but since April Fool’s Day they’ve swung their full attention to Obama. Every baseless screed you can think of they’ve posted on, but most of the emphasis is on Obama’s status as a tool of international Communism and the UN-mediated One World Order. For 325 large you can buy a lot of tinfoil.
This tiny, clearly fringe group consisting of a couple of flakes and a cadaver-in-waiting announced a press conference in DC for May 22, to be held in the basement of a DC coffee house. Not to disparage, but these kinds of little events go on all the time without notice from the press. (Go ahead; hold a basement press conference without a big name speaker on global warming or universal health care or the criminal conduct of Bush and Cheney and see what coverage you can get.) At best, some free-lance stringer might stop by to see if they can scrape together enough dregs for a spec piece to peddle to the Village Voice or McClatchy; no way would anyone of importance lower themselves to deal with this kind of trivia. The Washington Post sent Dana Milbank.
Soft-voiced, gentle, affable, charming, androgynously-named Dana, with his non-threatening big doe eyes and his please-don’t-punch-me glasses and his oft-repeated (see Lenin on lies) reputation as a trustworthy “liberal” and harsh establishment critic, had absolutely nothing better to do on May 22 of 2008 than to sit in a coffee shop basement and listen to a bunch of whackjobs – and nothing better to do that night but write about them. He delivered a full column’s worth the next day, as his bosses wanted him to, because in the whole wide world nothing more important was happening. Nothing mattered as much as making sure the message of the VRWC got the widest possible coverage.
And boy, did Dana deliver. Not a point-by-point takedown of scurrilous VRWC lies and trash-talking, no, and not a thoughtful explique on the sad consequence of cutbacks on out-patient mental health programs, oh no, not that either. What he did is what he does best, a full regurgitation of the VRWC talking points under the guise of criticism. Witness his lede, what the casual reader skimming through will assimilate and what the VRWC will be able to cut and paste as evidence that the Washington Post and even its Liberal Columnist Dana Milbank are seriously discussing:
Obama as You’ve Never Known Him!
By Dana Milbank
Friday, May 23, 2008; Page A03Here are some things we can look forward to learning about Barack Obama:
• That he was mentored in high school by a member of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party.
• That he launched his Illinois state Senate campaign in the home of a terrorist and a killer.
• That while serving as a state senator, he was a member of a socialist front group.
• That his affiliations are so dodgy that he would have trouble getting a government security clearance.
• That there is reason to doubt his “loyalty to the United States.”
There follows in the rest of the column a pretense at dismissal of these claims, all the while carefully repeating them along with a whole host of others; Milbank made very sure to give every one of the America’s Survival-VRWC talking points plenty of room to breathe. (Well done, Dana! Here’s another wad of cash to tuck in your pocket, along with a coupon for free eats at the next McCain BBQ. Enjoy!)
Which brings us directly to Steven Diamond.
Diamond, for reasons he best expresses himself, wrote an essay two days later on May 25 entitled Believe me, Barack is no Communist, But…. because:
Since I have been a critic here of some of the policies the Senator appears to support and people that he appears to be close to - and precisely because of their potential authoritarian implications - I thought I should address this issue.
Sure, of course. Never mind that the original source is a two-bit fringe group holding a meeting in the basement of a coffee shop, the Very Important and Well-Respected Dana Milbank is writing about it so I should write about it too because my opinions are also Very Important and Well-Respected. (Ego problems much these days, Steve?)
But wait; first thing, is there any substance to the claims about Obama and communism? Diamond says not, right in the title, and then offers more detail:
There are some indications that Obama brushed up against CP [Communist Party] members or fellow travelers in Hawaii (apparently Frank Marshall Davis, the black CP poet and journalist was friends with the Obama family in Hawaii) or in that Berkeley-lite, Hyde Park, over the years and these people may have influenced him to be more on the left side of the spectrum rather than the right. But that is a far cry from becoming a CP member or even a sympathizer. Believe me, the American CP had long stopped attracting young people to its cause by the time Obama was a teen-ager.
[Editorial aside; Hyde Park is “Berkeley-lite”? I like that; very much.]
OK, then; Obama is not a communist or a communist dupe. There is, however, that lingering “But” to deal with. Diamond has, as he says, written in the past about ties between Obama and Bill Ayers and through him to some “authoritarian Left” as Diamond would have it. Is there a real danger that the “authoritarian Left” controls or dictates or guides the policies and thinking of the next President of the United States? Here’s Diamond again:
But does this new “left” authoritarianism have the ability to control a presidential candidate, manchurian-style? Hardly, even if some in this movement had an interest in doing so.
Well, I feel better; no ability to control Obama, and no interest in trying. Even better, there apparently isn’t even an actual entity to worry about, no central organization and no discipline:
This new movement is very diverse in form and structure and plays in a variety of arenas, but has no central organizational structure or discipline.
Which would be even more of a relief to me, but Diamond senses their interconnectedness in more ephemeral ways:
There is, instead, a kind of shared, almost cultural or instinctual, identity with each other. This accounts, in part, for what is broadly known as “politcal [sic] correctness.”
Oh, damn, the PC police; probably the same sort of people who natter on about my devotion to being a gentleman. So annoying, Steve; I know just what you mean. He almost has my sympathy, but then he lets slip his true self:
But the reality is that you can find these new authoritarian types all over the place: in higher education…Schools of Education…the labor movement…the Chicago anti-war movement….
OH NO! They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere! Grab the children, Ma, and head for the hills! In a darkened coffee shop basement somewhere, Herb Romerstein is smiling and nodding, gently nodding his approval.
Having dismissed claims of an Obama-communist link as well as saying that whatever sort of “authoritarian Left” there might be has no controlling effect either, Diamond still goes on to speculate. Within what looks to be some 2000 words or so, he scatters an endless stream of little rat droppings: the totalitarian regimes of Tito’s Yugoslavia and China, Che Guevara, the murderous cowards Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and their erstwhile Weather Underground associates and convicted terrorists Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Mexican Zapatistas, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Even the benign SDS and the perfectly fine and upright Carl Davidson (called by Diamond a “Fidelista” for opposing the continued Cuban trade sanctions) and Marilyn Katz, both of whom broke early and unequivocally from Ayers and Dohrn over using violence for political action, are seen as part of some dark design.
It is a tangled web that Diamond weaves; reminds me very much of those generated by spiders under the influence of caffeine; oddly beautiful and intriguing, but functionally useless. He’s been at this “authoritarian Left” business hot and heavy for a while now; his 2007 PhD thesis, 500 pages worth about the Sandanista Movement and associated influences, is surely much on his mind and his passion for finding some more contemporary relevance is understandable.
Still; when after 2000 words the conclusion is that
It is hard to believe that Obama really supports the full politics of Ayers and Dohrn (does he really believe, as they do, that living in the U.S. is “living in the belly of the beast”?) or Katz and Davidson.
what you’ve got is pretty thin gruel. It might be that Obama shares some views with Davidson and Katz, who are pretty unremarkable if solidly leftist, but I just can’t see Barry sitting around the kitchen table with Michelle and Bill and Bernie plotting to go blow up the Pentagon; he just doesn’t appear to have the temperament for explosives.
But hey; maybe with a little creative thinking there is a thread to pull here:
Nonetheless, Obama has been unwilling to explain his relationship to them;
And there ya go; Obama has failed to deny unfounded accusations – Gotcha now, you slippery bastard! Nothing happened, therefore it must mean something; it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Plus, there’s this stark evidentiary trail of philosophical collusion:
…his [Obama’s]education advisor advocates one of Ayers’ key policies: repaying the “education debt” - race based reparations in the form of dumping more money into a broken school system; and Obama himself has spoken sympathetically of the same idea.
Damn; really nailed Obama there. As Diamond more thoroughly documents in earlier postings , Obama’s education advisor Linda Darling-Hammond co-authored a report from the Forum for Education and Democracy advocating an aggressive Federal push for improvement in public education with particular emphasis on the disaster that is entrapping our poorest children in a lifetime of ignorance and continued impoverishment. Obama has suggested, as have many others including myself, that the issue of slavery “reparations” can be addressed through collective investment in social benefit programs such as public education for both rural and inner-city poor, and jobs training and higher education assistance for poor adults.
Diamond sees this, the salvaging of public education and the providing of economic opportunity to the downtrodden, as evidence of “authoritarianism of the Left.” I say Diamond’s claim is bullshit.
But wait, there’s more. Let’s give Diamond his full due on this topic. He has also penned an article on April 22, now with several updates, entitled Who “sent” Obama? which attempts to tie Obama tightly to both the Chicago political corruption machine and the violent authoritarianism of Ayers. It fails at both, but this time it takes him 4500 words – the thing about bullshit is the higher you try to pile it, the more work it takes.
These are Diamond’s linkage words in the critical accusation (para # 25, m/l), dissected like bones from the covering fleshy text so we can see the strength of what he has to offer as proof:
I can only speculate…it is possible…That might have happened if…if…might have…My best guess….
That’s it. That’s all that Diamond has; speculation, ifs on top of ifs, capped by a guess. Very impressive though in its own malicious way, impressive enough to generate radio talk show appearances for Diamond
What is the influence of Bill Ayers on the Obama campaign? I will be discussing that question this Sunday (June 16) at approximately 11:30 PM West Coast time (8:30 East Coast) in part II of my chat with John Batchelor. Click here to listen live on the web on KFI-640 AM (LA).
Hot damn again! A real honest-to-goodness two-part radio interview! Respect! Fame! Knowing what it feels like to be a Very Important Person, just like Dana Milbank! Mission Accomplished!
And like all good demagogues, Diamond has now declared victory over the horrific influence of the “authoritarian Left” that he conjured but failed to document. In a column today, June 10, titled Obama’s retreat from Bill Ayers begins - is there room under that bus?, Diamond writes:
Finally understanding that the links between Obama and former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers are toxic, the Obama campaign has begun a strategic retreat from Comrade Ayers. Now they are hiding behind the petticoat of Hizzoner Mayor Richie Daley as explained today at Hot Air.
If you’re into Ed Morrissey - and I will unhesitatingly and proudly state that I am not - by all means go and read, but again there is no there, there. No retreat from anything, in any way at all, except in the minds of Morrissey and Diamond and those who think like them.
Recap and Conclusion
In both cases discussed above, we see the same pattern. Some VRWC operative, known in one case and unknown in another, starts an unfounded rumor designed to damage Barack Obama’s chances for the Presidency. In Larry Johnson’s case he was approached by the VRWC operatives covertly, perhaps directly but probably through trusted intermediaries, and Johnson was used to spread the deceit through the blogosphere and eventually into the M$S. In Steve Diamond’s case, the overt VWRC operatives were first facilitated by the M$M tool Milbank, whose work was picked up not only by other M$M operatives but the blogger Diamond from whence it spread again like an infection throughout the web community.
The time course is terrifying; from a VRWC presser on May 22 to the MSM on May 23 to a colluding attack by a blogger on May 25. It couldn’t be infecting faster if it were Ebola. Clickety-click, the lies are spread about Obama just as they were about Hillary and Kerry and Gore and Bill Clinton and Dukakis and Carter and on backwards as far as anyone cares to look. This cycle, however, was a big step upwards in complexity for the VRWC with a very great many of the supposedly progressive blogs joining the M$M to destroy Hillary Clinton, the stronger of the two dominant Democratic candidates.
With her apparently out of the way the M$M is now beginning to follow the lead of the VRWC and turn on Obama, again aided by foundationless attacks from supposedly progressive bloggers. I am not alone in seeing this as cause for serious concern. Anglachel, concisely and stoutly, describes the magnitude of the hazard smartly here and again more recently here. I don’t always see eye-to-eye with her, but in these two posts she is spot-on. The progressive blogosphere is systematically destroying any chance of defeating John McCain and thereby enabling the continued horrific destruction of the Plutocratic Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
The question, of course, is why. Is it just the seemingly endless inability of the Left to get along, the apparently inevitable in-fighting that has allowed the VRWC to control the presidency or the Congress or both for such a large percentage of the last 40 years? Or is there something more going on here?
Since we’re all into speculation and supposition and connecting the dots, because it is so much fun, let’s have a go at it right here. It seems to me, looking at the above, that the migration of bloggers from the Right to what was widely seen as at least semi-progressive political positions was not what it appeared to be. Instead of being rejectionists of Bush and the Republican Party, these bloggers including Huffington and Sullivan and Kos and so many others were in actuality trained and funded operatives of the VRWC. They were sent to take over the blogosphere and allowed to establish a cover by attacking Bush et al because the VRWC powers knew that it wouldn’t matter; Bush/Cheney would just keep doing whatever they wanted anyway.
In this most perilous time, when the VRWC is on the one hand close to a full takeover of the Federal government by co-opting the courts while on the other hand teetering on the brink of possible real investigations and even criminal convictions should a Democrat gain the White House, the agents were turned loose along with the M$M to exclude Edwards and the other white males by ignoring them (Step 1) so they could focus on attacking Hillary Clinton. The Republicans knew that she would be a real threat in the general election, so she had to be shut down in the primary. It was touch and go, but with a level of virulent sexism and misogyny exceeding any plausible bounds of justifiable political discourse, they achieved Step 2.
Now, with the weaker national candidate chosen for the Democrats, the job of the VRWC is to damage him so completely that even with the American public completely disenchanted with Republican policies they will still elect John McCain (Step 3). Long buried secret agents like Steve Diamond have been activated to echo the VRWC anti-Obama talking points, so that he can seen to be under attack from both the Right and the Left for being an un-American secret tool of some kind of authoritarian conspiracy to sell out American freedom. If everyone is saying it, it must be true.
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
V.I. Lenin
Now these lies and baseless character assassinations have been brought to Corrente, by anonymous posters who are either paid operatives for or agents of the VRWC – or, possibly, their unwitting dupes. If this scurrilous behavior, this concerted effort to destroy any chance of a Democratic victory, this full-out effort to ensure that the Republican McCain will be victorious, this unrelenting drive to make certain that the crimes and destruction of the past 40 years by one Republican after another will stay protected, continues here at Corrente it will have me as an implacable foe.
One more Presidential victory is all they need; after four more years the courts will be completely overrun by VRWC agents, from Federal District Courts to the whole of the SCOTUS. The operational branches of the Executive will have been totally restructured as tools of corporatist expansion, the social safety net and public education will be destroyed beyond rescue, American Empire will squat across the Middle East at whatever cost in blood and treasure is demanded, and the broader American public will be so demoralized and subservient that extraction of capital wealth for the benefit of the upper socioeconomic 1% can continue unabated. The Plutocrats will have won.
If this despicable, destructive movement cannot be stopped here, then where? If it cannot be stopped now, then when? I will not tolerate the spreading of falsehoods that benefit the cause of the VRWC. I will not tolerate the spreading of lies about the only remaining individual who stands in the way of the destruction of my country.
I Will Not Tolerate It.
Come ahead, prove me wrong
Bring It On.
I'm grateful
for this post.
You are right, bringiton. Thank you for this.
And while I have less faith than you that Obama stands in the way of destruction, the ends do not justify the means. We must not become like them.
Quick question
Without commenting on the rest of your post, which makes excellent sense: You quote from a comment of mine concerning my opinion of Johnson’s veracity, then write, “And that, apparently, is all it takes.”
Is all what takes? I don’t understand the disdain you obviously have for that comment. I didn’t make it in a vacuum; others in the comment thread had said they believed Johnson was lying, but that hasn’t been my impression. What’s wrong with my saying so? I haven’t been spreading the rumor, just watching it spread, as have you. And I did not say I thought the rumor was true—to the contrary. Nor was I praising him for making it public.
Seems to me if Johnson is lying, if he himself made up the rumor, you can’t make a case for the rumor originating with the VRWC
, so the issue of his veracity or lack thereof is important.
Help me out here! What’s the problem?
BIO: would Obama be the nominee if
he was actually unacceptable to all various powers-that-be? (and that includes many rightwing figures and conservatives — Mr. Right? )
And do you actually think these kinds of “he’s a commie” slurs accomplish things beyond ensuring that he’ll move even further right to counter them? (and isn’t that in fact one important goal/result of the eternal painting of all Dems as radical and outside the mainstream?)
And when even Maureen Dowd—the uber-Heather and propagator of oh-so-many smears of Dems—is talking about that video rumor— http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/opinio…
, don’t you think that anyone else (without her platform, or Drudge’s or Politico’s, etc) mentioning it pales in comparison to the most important thing about all smears: How the candidate deals with them?
As opposed to the muslim emails, which have already done their permanent damage, this is flowering now—in real time—and is important for a host of reasons. These things are expected—and we’d all think that someone who accomplished their own versions of them against the Clintons would have been ready, no?
It’s not about truth or lies, but about what happens every cycle. And about what goals are achieved by these things—every time.
oh, also--
countering these things with the truth is often really really damaging for those of us who actually are liberals and believe in things—
Obama’s for school vouchers, which hurt public schools—for just one example on something you listed.
And for a commie, backtracking on letting Bush’s tax cuts expire (which he’s done already—subject to “if they advise it’ll hurt growth”, he said) is a weird way to make this a worker’s paradise, no?
…
The problem, as I see it
is giving any slack to this kind of behavior at all. It needs to be called out for what it is, either a lie or damn foolishness, on the spot.
As I read your comment, it appeared to me to read that you were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he’s earnestly repeating what he’s been told, and that this earnestness somehow mitigates the perfidy. If I’m mistaken in that interpretation, please explain to me what else you might have meant.
The internet is an incredible force; for good or ill, depending on how it is used. When people like Johnson use it as he has in this case, for no beneficial good at all for anyone but himself, I say he needs to be condemned. Whether he is honestly propagating the truth, honestly propagating a lie, or knowingly being part of a deceit does not to me matter one whit. The damage comes from propagation of an unsourced, unproven claim that damages others. Too damn much of that going around.
Nothing against you as a person; kind, well-intentioned people often make undeserved allowances for the unacceptable behavior of others.
he was fed it--he didn't originate
it…i think he’s made that clear.
he’s like the Milbanks and Dowds who dutifully repeat and spread this stuff, i think.
damn your eyes
i go out to spend part of the not-yet-here economic stimulus check on something completely frivolous and come back home to find —
But like so many people, people other than me, he has a flaw
dude! you owe me a new keyboard.
lj and enablers: damnable lies and lie-mongering indeed. also, creepy, spot-on.
dana milbank: you read dana milbank so i don’t have to, and for that you have my undying gratitude.
steve diamond: i agree with your assessment of him on corporate, labor and international finance law, not because i know much about any of them or about steve diamond, but because his writings that i’ve read in those areas [thanks to the michelle obama whiteyfest] seem sane and logical and and fact-based and well-reasoned.
caffeinated spider webs: nice analogy, and i can’t argue for or against them based on reason or logic, or even willingness to do more reading than i already have, but i just gotta say, based on my years of hanging out with marxists, neo-marxists, anarchists of various stripes, and commie pinko red diaper babies all grown up, i don’t for a minute believe they’ve been able to recruit obama to be their mole, the one they’ve been waiting for, who finally takes down the man. in fact, it looks to me more like he’s co-opting real leftists to dress up his centrism with some much-needed street cred.
strictly anecdotal evidence [and meta, at that] and irresponsible speculation that i’m offering, i realize that, but i’m not seeing any left authoritarian control here. i could always be wrong, there are politicians with remarkable acting talents out there, and i hear obama has been playing poker for years now, so i suppose he and his handlers have me bamboozled.
oh, and i’m feeling left out, not being to run youtube videos at dialup speeds.
amber, there are a whole host of real issues
that need sorting out. It is impossible to do that, for you or I or Obama, in the midst of a constant rain of lies and misdirections coming from all sides. The VRWC
will try to muddy the water as much as they can. Obama will have to deal with it. My complaining here, let me be clear, is with the portion of the blogosphere that calls itself progressive - or liberal or at least earnestly antiestablishment - that is also propagating lies and malicious half-truths against Obama. It is the wrong thing to do, just as it was wrong to do it against Hillary.
Discuss, attack if you must, on the real basis of where you see deficiencies in Obama’s policies. No problem there from me.
But claims that Obama is an endorser of or is influenced by authoritarians and terrorists? That Michelle Obama is a raging racist? Either cough up the proof - real proof - or STFU
.
He was fed it?
Pretty passive, that. Did somebody make him chew and swallow and regurgitate too?
No excuse for Johnson; he’s responsible for what he did, not some mystery person. If he knows for certain that the tape exists, he should out whoeverhas it so we can all see for ourselves what it is. If it doesn’t actually exist, then we can all move on. What he’s done, tell about it but leave it hanging like a sword over Obama and the Democratic Party, is purely damaging with no good acomplished.
Everybody else does it is also no excuse. If Milbank and Dowd are the standards for acceptable behavior in the progressive world, all is lost.
what about the lies that are for him tho?
are those better? worse? just as bad?
and the lies candidates themselves tell us—both about themselves and against opponents? and when they themselves use those rightwing smears to stop opponents but end up killing possibilities for progress (like using Harry and Louise on healthcare)?
isn’t there a “live by the sword, die by the sword” thing operating?
and is “truth” really a good principle to use given the realities of our systems (of politics/govt and information/news/media) when the actual goals and policies and actions desired seem to only be attained thru winning by any means—the destruction of opponents and silencing/discrediting of opposition being proven widely successful?
Hipparchia, be grateful
could have been the CPU.
Don’t eat much at Taco Bell, but every time I see one I think of Demolition Man; highly recommended.
Booman deserves blame too then--
he posted pushback of some transcript or something, which further spread it.
And the bigger media did not simply get it from Johnson—whoever told him told many others, and Novak teased damaging video that Clinton refused to use ages ago, for instance…the stage was set for this not by Johnson—he was simply one person who ran with it for his own reasons—others are running with it for their own reasons too.
is “truth” really a good principle to use?
Ah, yes.
Otherwise, all is lost. If we don’t strive to defend and employ some reasonable semblance of “truth” then we are no better than scavangers squabbling over a corpse. Without the aspiration of, the struggling towards, a set of “truths” there really is no point to civilization at all. I’m a civilized person, and I have no patience for anarchy.
What about other people who lie? They need to be condemned. Just like I’m doing here. That lots of people lie a lot of the time does not justify anyone else doing it.
That rigidity aside, for the sake of your argument, please explain to me exactly how progressive/liberal/ antiestablishment interests are furthered by promoting lies about Obama? Any way at all.
i don't believe he had good intentions, but
i also saw it for what it was—and this is politics, where it’s expected.
i see Johnson and others on all sides as doing the same things that candidates, rightwing groups, leftwing ones, professional ppl like Stone/Atwater/Rove/etc, all do—smearing their opponents.
Blogactive and others who have outed ppl are a good comparison too—they’ve spread rumors and unproven assertions too—to stop closeted GOP officials from hurting us. I applaud those guys, but you wouldn’t, i guess.
(i’m up too late—to be continued tom’w…)
Plenty of people to blame; damn them all to hell and gone
Whatever integrity the Left may have had is fast slipping away. The more we behave like Rove, the more difficult it is to condemn him. If there is no separation from your enemy, why bother with the struggle? Why bother with morality at all? Why not just raid and pillage and steal and kill and rape and lie? Other people do it.
i'm going through withdrawal
i don’t know what drug they put in their salsa [the one of chopped-up tomatoes and onions and cilantro, not that liquidy sauce stuff] but what with killer tomatoes and all, i had to settle for less.
i’ll check that one out.
DialUp
Ah well. I love my cable.
Pat Benatar - Hit me with your best shot
I find Larry Johnson far less odious than the MSM and OFB
he may be a dupe, but he was straightforward as to what he knew and didn’t know.
The MSM/OFB
knew damn well the truth about the RFK/”as far as I know”/”fairy tale” fauxrages and they kept repeating the dishonest versions.
————————————————————————
“Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
cable
i’m seriously considering it. pat benatar rocks. thanks.
"I" statements, MyIQ
My standards, my condemnation; your tolerance may vary.
I have no use for the behavior, nor do I find the excuse persuasive that some other people are somehow worse. Damn them all.
If you can handle the costs, cable is the cat's meow
Had DSL, but cable is better in my experience. From dialup it is the difference between walking and flying. A whole new world opens up.
Benatar can be good; as a package, I’m more about Joan Jett.
Because doing right is its own reward.
Regardless of what others do, I want to do what’s right to the best of my ability. Otherwise I’d be just like them, and I don’t want that at all.
This is a corollary to Anglachel's point
That when the netroots use the tactics of mainstream and right-wing faux journalism, our power is vanquished.
Larry surely began as more well-intentioned. But unfair smears cannot be rationalized by “but theirs was worse.” And yes, their smears against Clinton and us were worse. Much, much worse. But we must not give up our moral authority so that we can no longer call it out.
The answer must be to clean it up, not to give up and surrounder to the nihilism, as bringiton points out eloquently and passionately.
It is my hope that those who feel criticized by bringiton’s post can try to move past perhaps an understandable defensiveness and swiftly into more of a “yeah, point taken, ok now what’s to be done?” mode.
Degrees of perfidy
it appeared to me to read that you were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he’s earnestly repeating what he’s been told, and that this earnestness somehow mitigates the perfidy.
I do think there are degrees of perfidy, yes, and that it’s important to elucidate them. Granted, it makes appropriate condemnation more difficult; it’s so much easier just to kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.
But as I noted—and you haven’t addressed—we can’t lay the rumor about the tape at the feet of the VRWC
if Johnson made it up. If we just blame Johnson and assume he was lying, and in fact he was telling the truth about what he was told, then the real perps escape condemnation altogether.
So Johnson’s perfidy in spreading the rumor at all, even if he believed it to be true, even if it is true, is a separate issue, one I was not addressing at all. (Although I did point out that I was not a Johnson fan, so that might have given you a clue that I wasn’t happy about what he was doing.)
I might also note that when you originally referenced my comment via a link in the thread on your “Sack of Pus” post, and orionATL objected, you claimed you had “copied and pasted a link to the wrong screen” and that you only wanted to link back to your original post. Turns out that wasn’t true. You said you weren’t attacking me, but you’ve now made it clear that you were most certainly attacking my judgment.
Nothing against you as a person; kind, well-intentioned people often make undeserved allowances for the unacceptable behavior of others.
Ironically, here you’ve mitigated my “perfidy”: my judgment may be terrible, but that doesn’t mean I’m not kind and well intentioned.
In any case, my original comment asked why Johnson was being charged with racism for publicizing the rumor—a whole ’nother degree-of-perfidy issue. I’m still interested in that one.
"It couldn’t be infecting faster if it were Ebola."
Indeed. Not everything is equally infectious though, for some odd reason.
I’d like to think that the battle is between truth and truthiness, but unfortunately things aren’t that simple.
What a dispiriting post, bringiton. Great, but dispiriting.
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Live by the sword, indeed...
When Axelrod was shopping around his slimy assassin-Hillary “golf” when she pointed to a memorable primary event in June in her response to WWTSBQ
…well, now! again, now, ok now! geez! NOW, its gottabe NOW!
However, that said, I will not stoop to rumourmong, like them.
I will counter absurd lies from now on, even though it is too late for the main threat to the oiligarchy to win, at least till 2012.
I bitterly regret that the exile blogosphere was not organised in a way to stand up to the unreal lies kos spread about HRC. Or maybe you were, I only discovered these other political blogs recently as a refugee.
Aside from the moral correctness, as the tiny surviving vestige of the reality-based counter-media, we must retain our dispassionate coverage or all our heads WILL EXPLODE!
Good Gravy.
I’ll just bring this all back to reality and point out that all Larry said originally was “Heads Up”.
The rest is history.
Now if you want to call Larry a “liar”, I could care less.
But I don’t think we really want to get into a discussion about “ethical reportage and discussion in the blogosphere” lest some A-listers get their feelings hurt.
Interesting that your ire was directed towards Larry though.
I’ll steal from Lambert (no ethics!)
Pffff.
PB 2.0 might be stillborn.
how progressive/liberal/ antiestablishment interests are ....
I’d say that because he isn’t progressive or liberal or antiestablishment in reality, and is actually to the right of even Hillary in many ways, spreading any and all rumors and/or lies about him—ones that are intended to hurt him or to help him, btw—are all part of the usual election noise.
Facts are not being spread by him, his campaign staff, his supporters — or his opponents — not about him, people around him or the guy he is running against. And of course the media is almost never spreading facts either, but constructing drama, narratives, and following scripts, etc.
Truth is not involved in any aspect of it—except when it comes to factchecking statements (which includes rumors and lies and exaggerations both pro and con). If that was a priority months ago, i’d see a case for it continuing—unfortunately, i won’t defend those who gleefully used lies and smears to demean and smear good Democrats—and to tar all the many millions who didn’t vote for the nominee.
And the standards can’t all of a sudden start now—that’s closing the barn door long after all sides have been benefited —and hurt— by all the lies—after months of savaging one candidate to favor another. Calling for truth now is very convenient and will be ignored as usual. It also is both hypocritical and hobbling—especially when the candidates themselves lie every day in multiple ways.
plus, anyone who runs
should be a big enough boy or girl to deal with all this—it’s not like any of it is new or a surprise.
Can I still enjoy a little Schadenfreude
watching the OFB
heads exploding in amazement when it hits their guy, though?
Other people do….
Feh
I think the default setting here needs to be that anybody’s arguments can be attacked at any time, because bad arguments deserve to die, and the only way to kill them is to kill them (because bad arugments, ignored, spread). Further, attacking somebody’s arguments isn’t the same thing as attacked the person.
I really have less than no interest in who said what to whom when. It’s a tiresome tangle and who wants to take the time to sort it out? Not me.
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
gaining power in politics demands winning--
if you can win with truth, you do. If you can win with destroying opposition, you do. If you can win with lies, you do. If you can win running on issues, you do.
You can’t implement any goals without first gaining power and winning—If we had a candidate who cared about the issues and goals, he’d run on those things—he’s not, so why should anyone else?
Why should anyone act honestly when the person they’re supposed to support doesn’t? When you can’t use the truth of them ? (their resume, accomplishments, or even their vaunted “judgment”)
And when the other party wins with smears, rumors, and lies every single time?
that's what both Obama and McCain are running on--entirely.
that the other is and will be worse.
but when the candidates themselves are wallowing in it,
what benefit do you get to avoiding gossip and rumors and smears besides feeling superior ?
What impact does your truth have when that’s not what gets spread, and is in fact not wanted at all by your candidate? When it’s not going to affect the things any candidate does in office — especially this cycle? Or the goals you want achieved? When neither candidate is running on issues and they’re both using lies and smears to get elected?
It’s like one sapling falling in a forest when all around they’re clearcutting the whole thing for grazing land for McDonalds beef.
"The Truth"
The great Terry Pratchett wrote a terrific novel of that title about, oddly enough, a newspaper of that name. In the book, the following cliche is oft repeated:
And so, apparently, this primary season. And we have a paradigmatic, classic example. The Howler has (yet another) must read post on this very topic:
So it would seem that we really do have a litmus test here for people who are FITH
or not. If, with the Obama campaign, you originally propagated the baseless RFK assassination smear, and haven’t stopped propagating it — and, ideally, have retracted — then you’re FITH, like Broder and Toner.
And it’s important to be able to sort out who’s FITH and who’s not, as Eric Boehlert pointed out at Eschacon, oddly, or not, to applause from about half the room:
And bringiton is indeed being “consistent and relentless” here.
The problem here — and I’m not being tendentious, this is really causing my head to explode — appears in bringiton’s closing peroration:
The problem here is that the Obama campaign, and much of the A list propagated the RFK smear. They’re FITH in the worst way. The methods and the result are exactly the same as the methods and the result of what the VRWC does. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
So, truth is more important than electing a candidate? Or not? If it’s not more important, then what relevance does the truth have to what LJ is doing? If it is more important, then what is the difference between the VWRC and the Obama Movement except new faces and the passage of time?
UPDATE Further, the sheer quantity of lies is vast. How to categorize which lies to attack first, and which to let go under pressure of time? Personally, I feel that by the side of the press, the campaigns, the A list, and the OFB
, that LJ and Diamond are pretty small beer. But maybe I’m wrong. Is there a taxonomy or hierarchy of lies, such that some should be attacked first? I suppose I’d go for “the lies told by my enemies” if I were the nly actor in the system but I’m not. “Lies told by my enemies that others are not dealing with capably” might be more appropriate, but even that leaves a lot of lies to be dealt with.
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
PB 2.0 will be stillborn, unless
we can muster enough fortitude to love the truth more than we love “our side”.
There’s been plenty of criticism directed at the A-listers, by name, and there should be more. I don’t know the extent of the damage they’ve caused with their unbridled hate-fest. I’ve never seen anything like it.
But I have seen the like of the damage that can be done by the conspiracy-mongers touting Obama’s “connections” to Communists, etc. I saw it in the drug-induced fantasies of my lefty peers in the late sixties and early seventies. It’s stupid, it’s evil, it should be called out wherever it rears its ugly body parts of any kind.
Thanks are due to BIO for bothering to analyze this idiotic stuff, so transparently malicious and idiotic that it made me roll my eyes so fast they practically fell out after one paragraph. Oh yeah, and for having a great sense of humor.
Sure --- if a pie is thrown...
You can still follow Thomas Friedman’s example and enjoy a few licks.
PB 2.0 will not be stillborn....
… if Corrente has anything to do with it.
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
This has been the precise argument used
to justify every every evil act in history.
bringiton
about context:
your post here puts on display your admirable erudition.
it is also emotionally overwrought.
there is a reason for that subtext of anger, bringiton and if you are as self aware as i think, you know very well what it is.
in this article you appear to be using your erudition to get at the truth.
when in fact, you are faking an interest in getting at the truth,
in order to use your erudition vindictively.
question for you bringiton:
spreading lies is dishonest
but is not, also, operating under the GUISE of seeking truth.
you can do better bringiton, and you have done better.
now about the diamond writings:
to me they seem relatively inoffensive, rather straightforward, and provide a specific view of chicago politics that i found interesting.
furthermore, i trust my judgment about how to interpret “propaganda” or “lies” better than i trust yours.
i would hope every reader of diamond would feel similarly.
are diamond’s articles on obama’s intellectual history so offensive that you need to verbally stomp on it and on diamond?
isn’t what you have done here to diamond, what obama’s true believers have done to senator clinton?
should we not TRUST voters, citizens, fellow readers at corrente to read diamond and make up their own minds what bits of info are useful?
i guess what leaps out from this article of yours, other than the subtext of anger, is intolerance for other points of view.
now about specifics:
i’m still not sure, after wandering in the maze that is the lush cornfield of your prose,
just what “lies” diamond is spreading.
diamond’s prose is straightforward.
it is filled with the kind of insider use of language that one finds in the writings of every close observer of a field.
i just don’t see the dishonesty,
in diamond.
all in all
i’d give you an a+ for rhetoric,
a d for a tightly reasoned argument,
and an f for abusing the trust of your admiring readers here, of which i am one.
Thanks.
I don’t have either the experience or the talent to discuss the authoritarian left in any context related to Obama’s past, and electing him instead of McCain is too important to risk.
There is no such thing as leverage.
Are the cases of LJ and Diamond then distinct?
Certainly LJ seems a transmitter in a different mode than Johnson, if that is what is going on.
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
are you volunteering to chair the board of censors, bringtion?
this comment among others of yours seems rather authoritarian to me:
[ The problem, as I see it
Submitted by bringiton on Wed, 2008-06-11 02:16.
is giving any slack to this kind of behavior at all. It needs to be called out for what it is, either a lie or damn foolishness, on the spot.
.
.
The internet is an incredible force; for good or ill, depending on how it is used. When people like Johnson use it as he has in this case, for no beneficial good at all for anyone but himself, I say he needs to be condemned. Whether he is honestly propagating the truth, honestly propagating a lie, or knowingly being part of a deceit does not to me matter one whit. The damage comes from propagation of an unsourced, unproven claim that damages others. Too damn much of that going around. ]
a couple of small points:
we do not yet know that the tape johnson talked about does not exist.
are you forbidding talking about it?
are you forbidding political gossip?
what do you say to your readers if indeed such a tape shows up in september or october?
what do you say, “sorry”?
when i speak of your overwrought prose, i am thinking of comments like this:
{The damage comes from propagation of an unsourced, unproven claim that damages others.]
sounds reasonable, even admirable, doesn’t it.
and very, very, very socially correct.
but about those specifics,
just how WAS obama damaged by the discussion of a cd starring his wife? i don’t see it affected him in the least. all it really did was give noquarter a headache with their servers.
is it just POSSIBLE that larry johnsaon is as passionate an advocate as you are?
and is it just POSSIBLE that he knows more about the truth of what he was speaking than you do, bringiton?
and then there’s this:
[for no beneficial good at all for anyone but himself,].
how do you know the truth of that statement, bringiton?
how do you know the truth of your own statement?
having read his work on outing valerie plame, on iraq, on the bush admin’s pr for invading iraq, on iran
i would never in my life consider larrry johnson as acting solely in his own interest.
more overwrought language, bringtion.
Yeah well dispiriting whatever. I am in a really foul mood
I am so disgusted with the Left right now, with the American people as a whole, I do not trust myself to fully vent. All through the early campaign, there was a sorting out amongst the blogosphere. Fair enough, to mull things around, but too much focus was expended on process not on policy. (Not here at Corrente; there are some places still with Liberal
standards.) As soon as Edwards was gone, however, the vast majority of the higher traffic blogs all swung to Obama for apparently emotional reasons and they set about destroying Hillary with the same words and the same enthusiasm the VRWC
had used for years – plus charges of racism, something even Karl Rove hadn’t the Audacity to try.
And it worked. Hillary is vanquished. All the Democratic Party has remaining is a flawed and tenuous candidate, who is in for a difficult struggle against the combined forces of the VRWC, the M$M and the openly criminal conspiracy that is the Republican Party and the full might of the Executive branch that they control. It is no exaggeration to say that the only person standing between ourselves and the final takeover and destruction of American democracy is, Goddess help us all, Barack Obama.
He’s all we have for now. He is all we have to work with, the only tool available with which to slay the Beast. And yet, what does the rest of the so-called progressive blogosphere decide to do? Attack him as well with the same words, and using the same talking points as, the VRWC and their lackeys the M$M. Of course. Grand. Just the right thing to do, because baseless character assassination and systematic political destruction of the only human being standing in the way of functional Plutocratic totalitarianism is - fun!
Same exact tools of character assassination and guilt by association and media manipulation as McCarthy, dot-dot-dot connection right from him and HUAC through to the present VRWC and the work of Johnson and Diamond. If you took their work, on Obama/Ayers and Michelle/whitey, and dropped it in with the posts up on America’s Survival Inc they would fit right in. Literally, in tone and content, you wouldn’t know they came from supposedly liberal, supposedly progressive authors.
I’ll tend this thread a while longer and then I need to step away; I am so disgusted, so repulsed, so offended by so many people right now I cannot express myself in any way close to cordiality. Some of this nonsense will, I know, wane as people’s feelings sort themselves out. Once they do, it will be easier to have sensible discussions about what to do next about the presidency. Meanwhile, there are other topics of interest to discuss, where I will be less likely to offend.
Apologies to all who may have been unfairly harshed on here, as collateral damage; I am, I confess, in a foul, foul mood. No apologies whatsoever to those who had this coming; stop your nonsense, sort yourselves out, identify the true enemy and put your effort there. Whether I like it or not, Barack Obama is my guy. Stop the unwarranted picking on my guy, or else.
Oh, Lambert...
…you nailed it yet again:
If [truth] is more important [than electing a candidate], then what is the difference between the VWRC and the Obama Movement except new faces and the passage of time?
My head has been wanting to explode; you just gave it permission to do so by articulating the problem so clearly.
I hope to Goddess my state isn’t in contention come election day, because the lesser of the two evils just isn’t lesser enough for me. I’m afraid I’ll walk into the voting booth and stand there paralyzed, and they’ll have to drag me out on a stretcher, babbling incoherently.
Bringing a knife to a gun fight works, if truth is on our side?
Obama — yes him, not his subordinates or his handlers — allowed the RFK smear to continue until it stopped serving his purpose. It was a lie, he knew it, and he allowed it to be spread through his organization’s deliberate actions.
When we told the truth, provided tape, quoted Clinton’s interviewers who endorsed her after their talk, what changed?
If lies are more powerful, more filled with meaning, than the truth, and we have lost again and again and again through telling the truth — hell, what’s the latest impeachment posturing about except putting that truth one more time into the public record — then how do we fight?
If lies are nuclear, do we stick with unilateral disarmament, when the conventional wisdom is M.A.D.?
And, if the people who oppose (not dismiss, but actively oppose) the necessary difficult reforms to restore representative democracy to this country — through purging of civil servants who were hired in violation of the Hatch Act, the war profiteers in government and in the defense industry, or through investigation of the agencies that have sacrificed truth for profit (that’s what ’non-partisanship’ boils down to, a lack of opposition to this present administration’s crimes) — do so with a (D) after their names, and I am told I must vote for them else the crimes they really aren’t opposed to will continue — won’t they, after all, turn out to be the authoritarian left?
Silliness
Assessing evidence and reasoning isn’t censorship, for pity’s sake. Substantive responses, please.
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
If matters come down to "one man"....
.. that’s a sign that the system is totally broken, and we are so fucked. Generally, such a man is found riding a white horse, and such stories tend to add badly.
I may be misinterpreting, but my $0.02….
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless
his (R) heart.
Hierarchy of lies
Lambert, no real structure here for me in sorting out what to condemn. Perhaps a bit like dealing with biting flies; the ones that happen to come close to me get swatted. I could go out amongst the thickets and hunt them down, but likely not. When they come buzzing right under my nose, though - smack. Think of it as Nature’s Way.
Of Fortitude...
Being a man of no faith, good luck with that.
See…
LOL
Or ELSE!!!!
WTF
?
“Unwarranted”
Oh fuckin boy.
Which lies?
Faced with the rich selection, that’s a hard question indeed.
I’d like to advocate for going after the lies told by my friends, too. Funnily enough, political discourse is not just a battle where we try to annihilate “the enemy.” Isn’t that obvious from the effect of the Obama trolls on the Clinton refuseniks?
A few, very few, but maybe determinative few are persuadable. One reason I took a close enough look at Clinton’s record and policy proposals to jettison my oh-so-predictable bias in favor of Obama is that his supporters started purveying obvious hateful lies early in the process. If they hadn’t told those lies, who knows, I might still be all blissed out on our coming post-everything Presidency.
Lies told by my friends discredit me more than lies told by my enemies. Is that just too naively high-minded?
the system is totally broken, and we are so fucked
About sums it up, Lambert, thought we were in agreement on that at least. I’m not happy, but what are, exactly, my choices now?
Between Obama (are you sure white horse is OK to say?) who may indeed turn into a problem versus McCain who is 100% certain to be a problem, simple game theory compels me to be an Obama backer. 1/1000 chance of improvement, any chance at all, is better than none and with McCain, things will only get much, much worse than they are now. On a ten point scale, Obama may be at zero plus or minus not much; McCain is minus one hundred – on a ten point scale.
Meanwhile, where Obama has faults they need to be openly discussed, preferably with constructive improvements included. You Suck! may be true, but in and of itself it is not helpful. If as the summer progresses he does not gain traction and continues to lag behing McCain, then it should be clear to all that the problem with his polls was not Hillary or that people don’t know him. In that case I will be right out front with a call for replacing him at the convention with Hillary. I am not a big fan of Barry’s.
What I’m complaining about here, however much some may wish to deflect, is malicious unfounded accusations and lies. No patience from me for them being directed at Obama, or Michelle, or the Democratic Party or its leadership. There is real Evil to be vanquished, and I will not tolerate anything that gets in the way.
Anyone discomfited by that? Tough.
Check
Totally with you. That’s why “unwarranted” is a key word, yes? IOW, the truthful calling of bullshit is to be encouraged, not deplored.
I’m intrigued by the argument above that lies by my “friends” are more important to combat than lies by my enemies, since lies by my friends discredit me, where lies by my enemies don’t. If I don’t distort the point made. Thoughts?
[x] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
There is real Evil to be vanquished
Too easy.
I’ll just let that punchline die.
Hey willyj; you got a problem with my hyperbole?
Indeed there is a need to tell the difference between warranted and unwarranted attacks. When people just make shit up, or pass along shit that somebody else just made up, I put it in the “unwarranted” bucket. Your sorting system may vary, but that’s for you to worry about, not me.
“Or else” is I come around and get all up on their ass, like this. It isn’t much, but I’ll do what I can.
About friendly lies,
just to take care of an obvious point:
Lies told about me by my enemies discredit me in the eyes of others, and badly, if people believe them, and must be fought.
Lies told by my friends, whether believed or not, discredit me absolutely if I don’t disown them. Witness the way you (and I) feel about voting for Obama after the RFK episode.
I suppose there’s a pragmatist’s rejoinder that, then, we should make sure we all tell the bestest, most believable lies ever. I don’t see that working out well.
Nice sentiment
BIO,
I agree with you about truthfulness, in fact it is one of my primary problems with Obama and the OFB
. Not my ONLY problem, but very, very high on the list. Which is why I personally don’t believe that Obama is the “only remaining individual who stands in the way of the destruction of my country.” You gotta admit, that is some very fine hyperbole there, no matter HOW much your mileage varies.
So having said that I completely disagree when you say
“Whether he is honestly propagating the truth, honestly propagating a lie, or knowingly being part of a deceit does not to me matter one whit.”, because I think that in that statement you jump the shark. I don’t agree with what Johnson did, I don’t think he is a liar, I think he was a fool, which is worse. He was a fool to trumpet what people of obviously questionable motives said to him. He was a fool regardless of whether it was true or not, because what he said couldn’t possibly damage anybody more than it damaged HIM.
But let’s agree on the main point, I have zero truck for anybody spreading rumors, false or not. I also have very little truck for johnny-come-lately fauxgressives who are only in it for what’s in it for them. I have zero truck for assholes like John Aravosis, Markos, Booman, WKJM
etc. who’s primary goal in life appears to be to destroy via unprincipled lies, sexism, classism and/or racism, at least half of the Democratic party and the integrity of the progressive “brand”.
When compared to their crimes and impact, Larry Johnson and his stoopidity isn’t even a zit on our collective ass.