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Bush derangement syndrome vs. Obama derangement syndrome? — 165 Comments

1. You know what they say about irrational hatred. You cannot reason people out of a belief they did not reason their way into in the first place.

2. It is difficult to sway a true religious believer and Leftism is a toxic, hate filled religion .

3. Nepotism, or the perception of it, and inherited wealth played large roles in the left’s spleen venting over Bush. Hatred of nepotism and inherited wealth play large roles in leftist ideology.

   For the left, destroying the tradition of passing wealth down through family is almost a crime. They want to create a society in which everybody starts equally at birth.

   Bush committed the worst crimes in the eyes of the left simply by being born into a family that had a large estate and could help him to achieve his ambitions.

   This is precisely what the left wants to destroy. Didn’t the Soviets set out to eliminate the Kulaks?

   Bush appeared to be the worst of the worst… the son of a president who was heavily connected to the oil industry.

   He represented evil incarnate.

4. Statements like they are “very intelligent people but…” miss a key point. Intelligence only has value if it is harnessed to rationality and the ability to discuss logical progression, if only to analyze where it might break down.

   BDS is the result of the liberal mind reacting to the certainty that, if they participate in a logical and rational discussion of the issues, they will face the repudiation of their BELIEF. Their central faith in all things leftist will be gravely threatened.

   I had a similar experience with a fundamentalist, born again christian, who believed that the bible was the literal history of human kind. He held a PhD in a branch of nuclear physics, and was a highly competent engineer. I did not know about his religious conversion, when, back in the 90’s, the topic of teaching creationism as part of high school science came up in conversation. At first the discussion of the issues was quite coherent, when suddenly he verbally attacked me personally, and stormed out of my office. We were approaching the problems with reconciling carbon dating (and similar dating techniques) with the biblical chronology of the age of the earth. Rather than end up on those grounds, he blew up, ended the conversation, and fled the scene. Until a mutual friend clued me in, I was at a loss to explain the event.

   This is BDS. It is faith. If opposed with facts that dispute it they have only one recourse. As far as I can ascertain the only effect that intelligence has on this, is to increase the level of emotional denial.

   Eventually, of course, either they will face it themselves, or, in order to preserve their out look, detach from reality sufficiently to avoid the inevitable erosion of their beliefs.

5. I don’t believe the derangement syndrome is based on the target’s individual characteristics at all. It’s not Bush’s accent or the fact he’s a Christian, or that he misspeaks. These are used after the fact to justify the feelings of hatred.

   There are two key components to the most common version of the derangement syndrome that I can see in people I’ve come across.

   One is an ideological difference of opinion. In other words a difference in the structure of assumptions around which we justify and interpret our view of the world.

   The second is that the person in some way represents a real threat to our assumptions supporting our worldview sufficient that tolerance of their point of view would create serious cognitive dissonance or cause us to become aware of a contradiction in our views.

   That second point is the key one that explains why real hatred is turned loose by the group on the target, and why characteristics can so readily be forgiven in one context (for someone of the right ideological persuasion, but not the outsider), but not the other. (e.g. FDR the aristocrat and his political acts – or Obama’s 57 states)

   It also explains why women and minorities who do not toe the line get a special dose of hatred. They are a more serious threat than your average run of mill middle aged white male who is assumed to be guilty of thought crimes.

   Your average conservative – especially one who’s gone through college – generally had to arrive at their conservative worldview by facing up to and resolving perceived contradictions despite pressure from their peer group and at least some of their teachers/authority figures.

   Your average ‘liberal’ continues in their current frame of mind by NOT confronting such issues, and is therefore primed with an allergic like reaction when such a threat appears.

   It’s also why generally these days conservatives tend to be more open minded and tolerant than leftists (I like that term better than liberal) and ready to actually listen and possibly adopt contrary points of view – they’ve done it before.

   It’s why these days leftists in developed countries are very similar to Islamic extremists overseas in how they think and deal with contrary points of view, which represent real threats to their comfortable worldviews. It’s also why leftists here are willing to get in bed with some really nasty characters – Any distant ally’s faults can be overlooked in the struggle against the ideological threat close at hand. The Allies were happy to use Stalin against Hitler in the struggle against the more immediate enemy.

   It’s also why in other times and places the roles were reversed. Conservatives have been those more susceptible to derangement syndrome and leftists/liberals were the thoughtful tolerant people.

   It wasn’t so long ago that some conservatives were deranged about Clinton, who infuriated and frustrated conservatives by adopting – nominally – many of their positions on issues. Clinton fooled enough independents to get reelected. Clinton was a very real threat to some conservatives’ worldview that someone from the left could govern from the center.

   Fortunately, Obama, being of the ideological left, will have a much harder time than Clinton of pretending to move to the center. I believe it will cause him real pain to budge even a little on many issues because he (and his political base) generally can’t grant any legitimacy (by compromising) to any part of the ‘evil’ conservatives without calling into question his worldview assumptions. For conservatives compromise doesn’t usually represent a challenge in the same way, so it tends to be of a different kind – judged by practicality- and more tolerable.

6. There is a certain amount of “Obama Derangement Syndrome”, but those who have it seem to be able to discuss their “why’s” somewhat rationally and without becoming screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth idiots. I can’t say the same for those afflicted with BDS or the larger CDS (Conservative Derangement Syndrome – See “Olbermann” or “Maddow”).

7. I think it’s worth considering how important the “stolen” election in Florida is. The Left are not ready to forget or forgive the fact that Republicans deprived them of their God-given right to stuff the ballot box.

   During the 2008 election I noticed several Obama yard signs around here (New England) — which prominently displayed the outline of the state of Florida in the corner. Eight years later, when entirely different candidates were running, they’re still waving the bloody shirt.

8. I like Otiose’s explanation — it agrees with much of what I have observed in the past decade or so.

   I am surprised, though, that every commenter thus far has left out an important in BDS: that it was dramatically enhanced by the press.

9. uncleFred,
   I agree about the intelligence. Higher intelligence is generally used to find more complicated justifications for existing ideological preferences.

   In other words, it’s not hard to come across some people with very high IQ’s who believe some incredibly ridiculous drivel.

   In my freshman year of college my roommate, who was a jock in denial (he refused to live in the jock dorm) majoring in premed biology, asked me for feedback on his first essay for freshman English. He was arguing for the literal interpretation of the Bible exactly as written. I didn’t argue with him – I had been a top debater in HS and was particularly good at cross X – I just asked him questions. He grew more and more agitated as he was forced to confront one contradiction after another. Things came to halt when he said to me – ‘If you ask me one more question, I’m going to throw you out that window’. Because we were on the third floor and he could easily do exactly that, I dropped it.

   One thing I learned in the military – there is another element apart from intelligence for a person to be effective in interpreting/manipulating in the real world. People generally call it common sense.

   I met people who did not have book smarts, but got things done, and/or could inspire/organize people to get things done.

   Generally, I’ve found that if you expose some contradiction in a person’s belief system, they do not thank you.

10. To continue what I was saying before my comment was snatched from my computer and sent away:

    The press essentially made it “ok” to hate GWB, to be irrational, even. I date this from the “gravitas” comments of the first Bush campaign, when a number of commenters all came up with the same criticism of W. It was clear there was some form of complicity among opinion writers, but that complicity was winked at, accepted, allowed to stand. If a single respected commenter had stood up to that example of media coordination of the message things might not have gotten so out of hand. But the press coordinated their anti-Bush message and got away with that coordination, and all of a sudden it was all right to be openly in the tank for one political party. It was all downhill from then. If it is ok to coordinate the message, it is ok to call for hatred, for disrespect, for dismissal of the candidate (and ultimate winner).

    I told many of my friends during Obama’s campaign that the media would either look back at that period as an example of not doing their job, or they would gradually wither away for lack of relevance. I tend to think the latter is happening right now. If anyone had suggested two years ago that Newsweek would sell for $1 they would have been laughed out of town. When that happened several months ago barely anyone noted the passing.

    BDS is a symptom of a larger reality: the mainstream media no longer matter to a very large part of America, and where they do matter they are still not respected. F

11. F,
    I’ve never heard of it, but we see Fox DS all the time.

    Fox can host a leftist and let him have his say, but the reverse is a bit more challenging. The MSM is forced to do some of it these days – more than they ever would 20/20 years ago.

    And on forums a symptom of someone feeling threatened is the immediate anger and resort to ad hominem attacks and name calling.

12. The fact that liberals chose Bush to be Emmanuel Goldshtein for their two minutes hate can be entirely arbitrary and has nothing to do with his actual merits, but the need to scapegoat somebody to reinforce groupthink is always present in leftist universe. Stalin had to demonize Trotsky to explain away famine and justify terror, and liberals had to demonize Bush to explain their election fiasco.

13. BDS and other leftists reactions are best explained by Evan Sayet. If you have not seen or heard his 2007 presentation of “How modern liberals think” you should spend an hour and and view it at either evansayet.com, or heritage.org. Evan makes a very cogent argument about leftists ideas and behavior. He also does it with good humor.

14. Ref Iraq and WMD. It appears that the last Wikileaks dump had some serious mentions of SH’s WMD.

15. Which would make it even worse for the BDSers, woudln’t it?
    I recall when the US went into Somalia. The usual suspects were scouring the maps for oil in order to accuse the elder Bush of going to war for oil. First you hate. Then you find the rationalizations.

16. First, I’ll say up front:

    I hate both Bush Jr and Obama.
    My opinion of Obama can be found on the thread about what the left is saying about the loss.

    My opinion of Bush is higher than Obama, but that is not saying much. No, Bush didn’t steal the Florida election in 2000- not only do I think the SCOTUS made the right decision but I also did quite a bit of research on the chad counts and things – but he did lie about Iraq no matter how many rightwingers say otherwise. I was in favor of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan because I foolishly thought we wanted to get Bin Ladin and I didn’t think we’d have to hang around long after we deposed the Taliban. Hah, foolish me. As we continued to stay there, and as the Taliban came back into prominence and as Bin Ladin continued to be alive and beacon for radical muslims everywhere, I started to have second thoughts. At first I thought the real reason we were there was related in some way to an oil pipeline whose name escapes me. Now that it turns out there’s probably over a trillion dollars of rare-earth metals extractible there, I think I see the real reason. It’s a part of the global game between America and China for control of oil and rare-earth minerals.

    Same for Iraq, though I think its more for oil, and the fact that you have a base right next to Iran, and Iran has been getting pretty uppity threatening oil supplies and the dollar as reserve currency (like Saddam did *cough) and to be fair, is a real threat to Israel. I supported Iraq because I believed Georgie about WMD’s -after all Saddam had used gas on the Kurds ( I always viewed Bush Sr’s betrayal of the Kurds as a national disgrace on our part. We told em to rise up, then didn’t use our power to suppress Saddams airforce from gassing them) so of course Saddam is a bad man and I think if he could have got his hand on Nuke he could have done some real damage.

    Problem is, despite all the Conservative blathering about how WMD’s were real, dammit, they were – I’ve never seen any real evidence of this. Supposedly they were all shipped out of Iraq lickety split and so far have been hidden perfectly from our Navy Seal teams and the other assets we have both declared and undeclared in that area. Next, I’ll believe in Santa Claus.

    Nah, I think the real reasons for Iraq were different than those given to the gullible public, and this, not the “threat” of a few airliners blowing up is why we continue to keep a good sized division or two on the ground there.

    In any case, I voted for Georgie twice. Second time I held my nose.

17. I don’t suppose anybody has missed the fact that the BDSers never refer to Bush as “Stalin”.
    Funny, that.
    Brad. If you thought that going into Astan was merely to get OBL, you weren’t thinking more than a couple of hours ahead. Astan was a congenial host for alQ, and a quick strike and exit would have allowed it to happen again.
    Truly. You really didn’t think about that?

18. Afghanistan was also home of the Taliban.

    I thought we would have to overthrow them, so no I didn’t think it was a “few hour” thing. I even knew about the Soviet Invasion and what happened then so I wasn’t expecting us to take control of the country in a day. I thought it could easly be weeks to months, or even a year. What I DID expect was two things:

    A. That we wouldn’t be such hypocritical assholes. We’ve tolerated Pakistan sheltering Bin Ladin, but we didn’t tolerate a much weaker government doing so, even though until bin Ladin did what he did, the US and the Taliban got along just peachy. Of course it helps that Pakistan has a sizeable army and a few nukes. One can be rather ashamed of ones country when one thinks about how it (in most of its recent wars) only picks on opponents who have no real defense save guerilla style warfare.

    B. More to the pont, that we had an EXIT strategy. I was trusting Bush to be competent. Of course for awhile as we seemed to get bogged down, I changed my opinion of him to incompetent boob. Now that I’m convinced we had a reason to want a permanent or semi permanent base there, my opinion of Bush has went back up to “competent”. He never intended to get out of that country in my opinion. It may be even in Americas best interest to stay there, but that case was not made, and unless we get our share of those minerals I’m afraid that Afghanistan will turn out to be one of several things that will utterly destroy our budget. Our budget problems aren’t all entitlement spending you know.

19. I think a large part of the Bush hatred stems from the fact that he’s a Texan, and walks and talks like one. Since at least JFK’s assassination, I think there’s been a lingering dislike, if not hatred, of all things Texan, among many on the left. Anyone old enough to remember well JFK’s assassination and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson should also remember how hated Johnson (and perhaps by extension, all Texans?) was by the Kennedy family and their loyalists. If I recall correctly (I read the book in the 1960s!), William Manchester clearly showed this in his book, The Death of a President, which Jackie Kennedy, by the way, tried her best to suppress. Vanity Fair ran an interesting piece in 2009 all about that book and the Kennedy reaction to it; see here. This particular bit in the article gives an idea of how Texas, specifically Dallas, was viewed at the time:
    “In that third year of the Kennedy presidency,” Manchester wrote, “a kind of fever lay over Dallas country. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed, ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas.…Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; corporate junior executives were required to attend radical seminars.” A retired major general ran the American flag upside down, deriding it as “the Democrat flag.” A wanted poster with J.F.K.’s face on it was circulated, announcing “this man is Wanted” for–among other things–“turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations” and appointing “anti-Christians … aliens and known Communists” to federal offices. And a full-page advertisement had appeared the day of the assassination in The Dallas Morning News accusing Kennedy of making a secret deal with the Communist Party; when it was shown to the president, he was appalled. He turned to Jacqueline, who was visibly upset, and said, “Oh, you know, we’re heading into nut country today.”

20. If anyone wants to know who I voted for in our past Presidential election, I didn’t vote. I was moving from one state to another and didn’t take care of my voters registration in a timely manner. I was leaning McCain/Palin though, though I thought McCain was a RHINO and rather wished Sara had been at the top of the ticket. Obama DID tempt me with his hope and change spiel so I wavered a bit, so it’s possible I would have voted for the big O in the end. Thing is, both sides seemed competent and to represent some change over what came before, esp. Obama. When he got in, I quickly saw what he was about within the first 3 months. I pity anyone who staked their political hopes on this guy. Bushie Jr pissed me off , but at least he could LEAD.

21. I think we have all lost relationships over BDS, strangely enough. I lost some simply because I kept silent during a conversation in which I was expected to demonize Bush.

    It is quite weird how little moments like that one cause BDS sufferers to throw years of relational rapport out the window.

22. Jane quoting from Willam Manchester’s book The Death of a President:

    A retired major general ran the American flag upside down, deriding it as “the Democrat flag.”

    That would beEdwin Walker, whom Lee Harvey Oswald tried to kill.

23. 1. Worthwhile post and comments, especially Otiose’s first.

    2. Derangement syndromes exist both for and against ideologies and politicians. Hate Goldstein; love Big Brother. Obama and Palin each have triggered both varieties.

    3. Maybe such syndromes are hardwired into humanity and have an evolutionary function. In this age of WMD and the imminent age of do-it-yourself bioweapons, they may prove, literally, to be an evolutionary dead end. (Not the only possible outcome, of course.)

24. Some of Texas’ nutcasery was manufactured. Dan Rather’s first national scoop–when he was working in Texas, was a lie about kids in a school cheering the news of Kennedy’s assassination.

25. It’s hard to describe the gradual changes that took place in myself over the past decade that changed me from a semi-moonbat to voting for the first time this year, and for Republicans to boot!

    It first started when I found myself actually rooting for Bush to win the 2000 election. Living in Connecticut at the time, in the months leading up to the election, Gore seemed like a mortal lock and almost everyone around me supported him (even most of those from the South), so there was a bit of an underdog aspect to Bush which appealed to me. Furthermore, Gore didn’t appeal to me as a person–he came off as too pompous and elitist. He claimed to represent the middle class, which I was the product of, but I remember the inner turmoil I experienced when I actually found myself thinking that Bush, the evil Southern oil tycoon, seemed to care more about the common folk.

    I then got my first taste of Bush Derangement Syndrome at the Yale-Harvard Game of 2000, of all places. At the time of this game, the election recount was in full swing, and at some point they posted on the Harvard scoreboard, “Breaking News: Gore beats Bush 29-29”, a jokey reference to the headline of the famous 1968 tie game between the teams which ruined Yale’s season. I thought it was quite clever, but I was shocked to see many of those around me in the Yale student section become instantaneously and vocally enraged. I thought something had happened on the field, but soon realized the anger was directed at the scoreboard. A friend who had been one of my college roommates for 4 years, and whom I had never seen to take any interest in politics through our years together, was almost frothing at the mouth as he yelled, “Those m-f-ers, grouping us in with that f-ing retard!”

    Many others around me were having this same reaction at the same time (it didn’t help that most had had a few drinks), and I remember being a bit worried that someone around me might catch on that I too wasn’t visibly offended (it probably did help that they had had a few drinks).

    I eventually morphed back into a typical Daily Show-watching, Kerry-supporting, military-hating liberal for several years before breaking away for good in the past couple years, thanks in large part to Obama as well as the Left’s increasingly dismissive attitude towards Islamic terrorism.

    But it was that first first-hand experience of a mass outbreak of BDS that made me start to question that so-called liberal group of which I thought I was a part of. I saw I just wasn’t capable of generating such an instant and intense vitriol towards those one opposes politically. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that this is a very common character trait amongst Democrats, and one that likely cannot be altered.

26. My views on Obama have actually softened over the past two years.

    I had first thought he was another power hungry leftist and I despised him for it.

    Now after two years worth of stumbling, mumbling, bumbling fail I’ve decided he’s just your average dumbass narcissist who is more than happy to believe in his own godhood. His apparent ideology just happens to fit well with his self-delusion.

    I had a nephew who was happy to live in his own little world – talking about terribly important subjects on his cellphone to no one – there was no one on the other end of the line. Driving a crappy little car, but wearing laceback driving gloves and swaggering around like it was a Ferrari.

    Everyone in the family just accepted it and rolled their eyes chuckling at his antics.

    I see many similarities in the President. My family was smart enough to keep my nephew away from power tools or high voltage. Unfortunately for us we haven’t done the same with Obama.

27. Hi Neo,

    It’s been a few years since I’ve commented here, but given the general subject on this thread, I had to share one of my current experiences. Please forgive the length of this post.

    I have an old childhood friend/former girlfriend who I’ve recently become reacquainted and in touch with. When we were kids she believed in the typical daffy leftist ideas, though even then I leaned to the right. Still, we were kids, and neither one of us had the benefit of experience or extensive education to bolster or refute our beliefs.

    Since then, I went to school, joined the Army, became an Arab linguist, worked in intelligence, left the Army, served as a contractor in Iraq, obtained my Master’s in history, lived/worked/traveled in multiple countries and states in the Middle East, Europe, Oceania and the far east. Currently I work as a historian for the Air Force, and will be headed back to the Middle East for a few months. My friend finished college, became a teacher, obtained her Masters in Education, married, divorced, remarried, had a young son, and now lives and works from home, raising her son and helping her husband manage his business. Apart from this, she has never left the Midwest, has not traveled extensively, etc, and lives a relatively well to do life on a large, private house in deepest, whitest Missouri.

    In becoming reacquainted with her, I’ve discovered those former daffy beliefs have hardened. She is an avid listener of NPR, watches Maddow and Olbermann religiously, believes that those who disagree with her are “told what to think” by Fox News. Bush lied to get us into Iraq, natch, and most people on the right are racists, religious fundamentalists, etc., despite the fact I’ve heard her drop more than her share of racial epithets. Cops are racists. Border Patrol folks are racist and might as well be in the Klan (at the time of this statement I lived in West Texas, when I pointed out that many Border Patrol members were of Mexican or another Latino origin she danced around the subject.) Of course, she is also a very loud atheist. I’m not particularly religious, but while paying lip service to agreeing with my observations that certain atheists are as rabid and dogmatic as any religious fundamentalist, she then launches into some closed minded, bigoted remarks about Christians (you see where this is going) And of course, her atheism and criticism of religion points in only one direction. When it comes to adherents of a certain other religion, one that has a very recent and ongoing track record of killing those it opposes, killing homosexuals, subjugating women, etc., she is deafeningly silent.

    I’ve heard her drop hints of why this is so; Somali pirates act as they do because they are ‘poor.’ Hawaiian natives are terribly ‘exploited.’ (I live in Hawaii; not sure what she meant by this, she was speaking in terms of her resort on Maui, I guess ‘exploited’ meant they worked in the kitchen), terrorists must be mad at us for a ‘reason.’ In summary, if my friend didn’t exist I’d have to invent her; a finer example of the well to do, wealthy, white, sheltered, progressive can’t be found. Needless to say, her circle of friends are people she’s carefully surrounded herself with, who believe exactly as she does. I think the extent of our relationship is why still keeps me around (at least virtually). Still, at times she has stated that she has avoided talking to me about things because she finds me “intimidating.” I wasn’t sure what this meant for a long time until now: to her I represent the outside world that she has spent decades insulating herself from.

    In our discussions she’s expressed interest in my points of view. My level of experience, travels, and study is something she acknowledges, but seemingly, only in the abstract. She states that she realizes she’s “willfully ignorant,” in her terms, and that she is ill-informed. She justifies this in the sense that “they” lie to us, whoever “they” are. Still, the things she does believe in (see Maddow) come from some of the worst liars out there. In talking about my experiences in the Middle East, in Iraq, and elsewhere, she expresses astonishment at some of the things I tell her; completely the opposite of what she’s led herself or been led to believe. There are times when I’ve gotten the impression that deep down she realizes that her beliefs about the world are complete and utter faculty lounge bullshit. Her willingness to listen to me shows that. But, in the end, she goes right back to where she was before. If anything, lately she is doubling down on those beliefs.

    What’s funny is that in her personal life–how she raises her son, helping her husband with his very successful business, etc.–she is almost conservative. But in every other aspect she’s reaped all the rewards from living in this country while philosophically repudiating everything about it. It’s astonishing to me that someone so inherently intelligent can have such complete lack of self-awareness.

    We haven’t talked as much lately. As I said, she’s doubled down on her beliefs, becoming even more strident. I want to try and get her to listen and explain why she’s so wrong, about everything outside of her family life, but I know I’ll risk losing her friendship forever. Most other people I wouldn’t care about, people either change or they don’t. But for her I’m genuinely concerned, and here’s why: I have other friends I disagree with politically, sometimes intensely. But most of those disagreements are procedural in nature, at the end of the day we all want the same things.

    But in her case, the things she believes in are so outside reality that when, inevitably, the outside world that she’s worked so hard to keep out comes crashing into hers, she will be completely unprepared. My problem is that I don’t debate well. I know that my ideas are rational and based on experience, but I quickly become visibly exasperated with people who espouse completely ignorant points of view. That tends to turn people off. It’s a flaw, and I know it, which is why I tend to avoid highly charged debates.

    Again, sorry for the length of this post. It’s just something that’s been on my mind a great deal lately, the concern I feel for my friend weighs heavily. Then again, I think Neo’s personal journey is probably the best: people have to change on their own.

28. cjd: I think your closing hints at my response, which would be that you are a caring friend who has done all that may be possible for a friend to do. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make her think.

29. … he[Bush] did lie about Iraq no matter how many rightwingers say otherwise …

    It just so happens that I am compiling a list of Bush lies, a list so far that is a bit short, so I would be grateful if the commentor would do me the favor of providing a link to instances of Bush lying. I’m afraid hearsay won’t do, it must be quotes of words actually uttered by Bush.

30. Actually, the question is:
    Why should we share a country with such people.
    I wouldn’t want the individuals with such an ability for peculiar distastes in may personal life…

    Actually, I go out of my way to keep them out.
    I call it: keeping the environment clean.

31. At the risk of taking some flak, I will say that I see a similarity between BDS and ODS. Most commenters on this blog are very informed about policies and politics and I don’t see too many ad hominem attacks on Obama. However, I receive, almost daily, ad hominem and personal attacks on Obama from many of my conservative friends and see them in the blogosphere. I don’t think the number of such attacks is as great as they were during the Bush years. During the Bush years the left blogosphere was saturated with venemous ad hominem. So, ODS is an order of magnitude less than BDS. But it exists

    Many of the people that send these attacks to me are less thoughtful and somewhat less informed than the commenters here, but they are not ill mannered, ill tempered people. They have personalized the policies. That’s hard not to do. Most of his policies will have a deleterious affect on our lives. It requires a great deal of mental discipline to separate the bad policies from the man.

    gs suggests that the tendency to feel real hate and resort to name calling and worse against those with whom we don’t agree may be hard wired into humans. gs may be right. Otherwise Christianity would not have the command to love others as ourselves, even our enemies. It tries to guide us away from our known baser instincts.

    I keep asking myself if I hate Obama the man. When I see things like he (rather awkwardly) and his wife dancing with children in India – I smile and have empathy for his awkwardness. I realize then that I don’t feel hate for him. It does take mental discipline though.

32. I’m a Texan. Because of that, it has been very easy for me to NOT be bothered by Bush’s accent, the way he walks, etc. Trust me folks, that’s the way MOST intelligent, successful, competent, middle aged men in Texas talk and look. And trust me again…they are NOT stupid.

    Still, I can see how a Texas accent, etc. can turn people off who don’t live here. Frankly, I’m a bit turned off by Sarah Palin’s Minnesota-ish twang and cutsie winking. But I LOVE her thinking, principles, and common sense…so I overlook those things. And she’s clearly intelligent.

    I almost can’t watch Glenn Beck because of his over the top drama soaked style, but I agree with almost everything he says.

    We all need to work at overlooking style to get to a person’s substance. And we need to realize that the cultures in which we live have STRONG influences on our thinking.

    I think politics has gotten to be sorta like being a sports fan. We will bend the facts a LOT to support our “team”. (The refs who call fouls on our team in a basketball game are ALWAYS wrong!) We make excuses for politicians on “our side” when they are seriously wrong and attack politicians on the “other side” for the slightest mistakes. And then we get our “beliefs” reinforced by the people with whom we socialize at parties (other members of our “team”), dinners, and other events who are making the same allowances for “our side”.

    With this kind of allegiance and reinforcement, it’s pretty easy for feelings to evolve into hatred of those who lead the “other side”. (We UT grads used to have bumper stickers that read “Will Rogers never met Barry Switzer” . He was a U. of Oklahoma football coach.)

    Still, we conservatives ARE right. 🙂

33. texexec said: “Still, I can see how a Texas accent, etc. can turn people off who don’t live here. Frankly, I’m a bit turned off by Sarah Palin’s Minnesota-ish twang and cutsie winking. But I LOVE her thinking, principles, and common sense…so I overlook those things. And she’s clearly intelligent.”

    As a fellow Texan I mostly agree with that. New York accents bother me also- but here I am reading NEO’s blog almost every day- usually several times a day! 🙂

    This is one of the curses of TV and radio-but especially TV. Style gets elevated over substance often- and many people cannot see past it.

34. Again, I am reminded of Eric Hoffer. Hatred is a recurring characteristic of the True Believer:

    “The puzzling thing is that when our hatred does not spring from a visible grievance and does not seem justified, the desire for allies becomes more pressing….”

    “…much of our proselytizing consists perhaps in infecting others not with our brand of faith but with our particular brand of unreasonable hatred.”

    “…an active mass movement prizes hatred about passive contempt….”

    “Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds.”

    “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self….He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass.”

35. Two things fuel the dislike I have of Obama and neither could have been a factor in BDS: One is his arrogance and his disrespect for normal Americans. I have a hard time liking someone who thinks I’m a dumb hick. The second is frustration that all those highly regarded MSM reporters and pundits never did their homework on Obama. Early on in his candidacy there were plenty of opportunities to ask him some serious questions about his inconsistent statements and leftist boilerplate positions, but no one did. So I’m angry that my concerns (and those of many others) were ignored or considered intolerant, racist or whatever. Obama has become part of a media Obama complex in which anger at one amplifies my anger at the other. What I have is not ODS; it’s a rejection of the masochistic role they want me to assume.

36. Cjd, what just astounds me is, what is the *reason* your friend clings so hard to her preconceptions? I’ve known others like her in my days in academia, so I know the type, and I just don’t get it. What psychological *purpose* does it serve for them to really believe (to take one example you gave) that all border police are almost Klansmen? That the terrorists hate us “for a reason”? That Hawaiian natives are “terribly exploited?” That the terrorists hate us “for a reason?” I agree with the point Otiose and gs have raised about beliefs as essentially tribal markers, but why would one select for their tribal markers a belief system that basically fetishizes this stance of “mea culpa” and demands that one feel guilty merely for existing? I feel like there *has* to be some deep-seated psychological explanation, and I’ve been pondering this phenomenon for years now and I’m still not sure what the root cause of it is.

    It just baffles me.

37. I just wanted to chime in on the topic of intelligence vs. common sense.

    I really do hear what some here have said about intelligence being oddly ascribed to people who can hold delusional beliefs about certain things. Incidentally, one of the best explorations of this topic is Sidney Hook’s autobiography “Out of Step.” For whatever it’s worth, I give this book my highest possible recommendation (I think, unfortunately, it’s out of print, but you can get a cheap copy at Amazon used, like I did).

    Anyway, Hook has several chapters where he deals with his encounters with several brilliant men – Brecht, Russell, and Einstein, among others – and he details his exasperation at being unable to talk sense, politically, with them. The question it raises is what is the nature of intelligence? Is it all-encompassing, or can it be specialized? It’s sort of like Socrates’ old musings on virtue, where the first question was always “Is virtue one or many?”

    I basically come down on the side that it is too much of a violation of ordinary usage to deny that Russell and Einstein, for instance, were “intelligent.” Einstein had some of the craziest, most surreal political views imaginable (just read Hook’s chapter on his meeting with him to see what I mean). So, yeah, I believe it is also the case that with respect to whatever it is that makes for “common sense” or “political intelligence,” Einstein definitely did not have that.

    The amazing effect of Hook’s recounting here is that you come away from the chapter thinking, “Somehow, it seems to me now that Sidney Hook and people who think like him are actually smarter than Albert Einstein.”

    There are depths to this incapable of being plumbed in a comment. I simply want to say that it’s a big topic, and even though my friend mentioned above is politically about as intelligent as Einstein, in every other way he is one of the most brilliant people I’ve known in my life. I simply can’t imagine denying that he is intelligent. Even if I did deny it, I wouldn’t believe it.

    Overall, intelligence is probably best thought of as an ability that doesn’t necessarily get exercised in every area our minds cross into. And it is important to be clear that intelligence does not equal goodness, virtue, or even competence. I think of it in almost entirely “value-neutral” terms, and try to be factual about it.

    The only way I’ve been able to grapple with the “Einstein paradox” is to adapt Orwell’s insight:

    Ordinary folks can be pretty dumb, but they can never sink the depths of stupidity that intellectuals often do.

    Alternatively: Some things are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them.

    I don’t know how to explain that, but it’s true.

38. Thanks Neo, I figure that you are correct, but it’s hard sometimes. I’ve tap danced around her beliefs (and mine) for some time.

    Colagirl: I wish I knew the answer myself. The sad thing is, she’s always been like this, even though she has no experience (apart from speeding tickets) with cops, let alone Border Patrol agents. She seems to have some idealized notion of other ethnicities, cultures, etc., that automatically gives them a pass for any kind of transgression, and that there has to be some unsolicited reason for them to commit a crime, an act of terror, whatever. What she fails to see is that her own attitude, that she perceives as tolerant and understanding, is racist and paternalistic itself. It robs another group of its own humanity; it only acts a certain way because of past poor treatment, and thus incapable of acting any other way. It’s the notion of “The Noble Savage” writ large.

    I’m astounded by it myself. Oddly enough, I saw it best addressed last year during some discussions about the ham-fisted political overtones behind Avatar. A certain commenter noted that movies such as Avatar, Dances With Wolves and the like were white liberal fantasies brought to the screen. Through such storylines, white liberals were able to expiate their own perceived racial guilt, while at the same time fulfill their own fantasies about becoming the savior of the cultures in question (as if such cultures needed saving), achieving some kind of exalted status. In other words, they got to get rid of the white guilt, without having to give up the white privilege. My friend is similar, she rants about white racism and crimes her ancestors are guilty of, but she will never give up her home, her money, or her time to help these most most in need of it, white or otherwise.

    Another possibility is that at a certain point in peoples’ lives they become so wedded, so invested in their own ignorance that to repudiate any of it, even a part of it, is like rejecting yourself. That’s a hard possibility to swallow, as I think Neo has related concerning her own experience. Also, deep down I think she realizes that the circle of friends she’s surrounded herself with would shun her completely if she turned to “the dark side.”

    I don’t know, I could be completely wrong. But those are my thoughts on the subject. Someday I’ll learn the qualities of brevity.

39. I wonder what Neo means by “the more irrational segments of the birther movement”. If they exist in fact and not just in the minds of Leftists, why have I not run across them or their writings? To agitate the Left, these “segments” must have more visibility than obscurity. They must be widely seen and heard. Where are these ‘”segments”? Help me out here, Neo. Examples of irrationality, por favor,

40. Neo, you continue to out-do yourself! Great post.

    Can we compare the “lies” from Bush with the lies from Obama?

    I love all the references to the “stolen” election–can we re-count votes in numerous Democrat victories?

41. I saw Bush as a bumbling idiot, but I never found him hateful. He seems like kind of a fun guy to me. I thought his reasons for invading Iraq were honorable and I wasn’t against it. I never believed the WMD line, I thought it was more about sending a message that we won’t stand for crackpot dictators anymore. And ridding the Iraqi people of their evil tyrant leader. The incompetence Bush and his administration displayed after the war made me feel bad for being so trusting and so gung-ho.

42. Tom: I don’t have the time to document the answers to your question right now, but off the top of my head I’d say take a look at these pieces I wrote on the subject of birthers, here and here. My basic position is that it’s reasonable and rational to ask for the long form birth certificate as definitive proof of citizenship. The irrational birthers, IMHO are the ones who assert Obama was actually born in Kenya, on evidence that seems very flimsy.

    I happen to think he was born in Hawaii. I think the preponderance of evidence points to it.

43. Tom asked about the birthers, “If they exist in fact and not just in the minds of Leftists, why have I not run across them or their writings?”

    Surprised you haven’t seen all the info out there. I have three friends who regularly send me updates on the “birther” suits and “evidence” from Kenya that he was born there. I don’t find their information persuasive. I have given up trying to debate the issue. I have taken the stance that they might be right, but the odds are minimal.

    You can see a lengthy discussion of the controversy at Wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories

44. It has seemed to me, for quite a while, that some people (most?) are quite capable of ‘compartmentalizing’ their intelligence. It’s as though they have consciously decided that they will think deeply and critically about some areas, but not others.

    This doesn’t have to do with politics… and I’m not at all sure if this is the same as the intelligence vs. common-sense divide already mentioned above. For example, I’ve known a number of deeply religious people who were quite good at thinking analytically on any number of topics, but shut down the mind on the subject of religion; some things were accepted as given, and were simply not to be thought about.

    (For the record, I’m not an atheist. My belief in God is very important to me. I’ve also had occasion to examine my beliefs most carefully in recent years, and try to explain them to those who do not agree. Having smart teenage kids can do that.)

    I think of this whenever I hear about Very Smart People who are clueless outside of their specialties. Bertrand Russell comes to mind — “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong”. Ditto Einstein and his pacifism. I think about it every time I read about terrorists with college degrees (even doctorates, in some cases).

    It’s very sad, in my opinion — a person clearly capable of thinking, who has consciously decided not to do so.

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

45. In re the birthers, by the way — Neo, I agree completely. I think that, in all likelihood, President Obama was born in Hawaii, as he claims. I do think that it’s unreasonable for him to have refused to document this fully, and I think that it’s quite reasonable to push him on this matter — he works for us, not the other way around, and it’s not at all unreasonable to question someone’s job qualifications after they are hired.

    I also think that this is yet another instance of the Mainstream Media falling down on the job, badly. This was a red-hot story that they should have run with — and they did not.

    DiB

46. a: I think we waste time wondering why they hate Bush since they hate others who are not like him.
    b: before Obama I noticed the same thing with Mike Moore. The Bush haters would think we hated Moore the same way they hated Bush.

47. Another Eric Hoffer quote reference hate is (I am quoting from memory here) “a mass movement can survive without love but never without hate”. (BTW here is one from George Will about the intelligentsia, “that herd of independent minds”.)

    Hate and absurd beliefs must serve some need, and if Hoffer is right they are defense mechanisms for low self-esteem. For that alone hate must qualify as the most cost effective psycho-therapy there is. Among the additional benefits is that saves time and energy that would be required for research and analysis (aka thinking). There are also social benefits; one can easily be accepted in a company with similar hatreds, whereas finding friends on the basis of one’s personality involves risks.

    Considering the advantages of hatred and delusional thinking there must something wrong with those who do not indulge in it.

48. There are times when I’ve gotten the impression that deep down she realizes that her beliefs about the world are complete and utter faculty lounge bullshit. Her willingness to listen to me shows that. But, in the end, she goes right back to where she was before. If anything, lately she is doubling down on those beliefs.

    This is my sister to a T. Talking political sense to her was like trying to nail jello to a wall. She just refused to use her perfectly good mind on the subject. She knew I was a former Democrat, not one of the Flying Monkeys of the Dark Side[TM], she knew I’m an art bum who lives in New York; she knew I have less money than she does — yet her last comment to me re Obama was, “You’ll have to give up on me about the election. I already voted absentee for Obama. I just think it’s nicer for everyone to work together, and I don’t want to cast a vote for a bunch of rich people.”

    That last idiotic bit nearly made me blow a gasket. In what universe does she think that I, living in a tenement, am “voting for a bunch of rich people”? It was a spectacularly stupid thing for her to say. Unreal.

    She, though, didn’t have BDS. We’re Southerners, she was a (nominal) Christian, and she didn’t hate the guy.

49. As far as the hatred goes: I was really staggered by the venom that was spat at Sarah Palin the morning after her first convention speech, in the Mad. Ave. ad agency where I was working. The lefties I work with had an instantaneous, vitriolic reaction to her, like vampires sighting a crucifix.

    This was before anyone knew ANYTHING about her, except that she was the Republican nominee for President, and the governor of Alaska.

    The grounds? she was a Republican; she was a small-town girl; she was a Christian; she was much too good-looking; she was cheerfully patriotic.

    IOW, everything they hate and would love to destroy. It was mind-boggling. The Left really is the Fifth Column in America, and yes, they really do want to destroy the American way of life. And they were positively vicious about the small-town provenance and patriotism of Palin.

    These same Tolerance-and-Love types were dripping with contempt when the ad agency got the hardware account of a huge manufacturer — they made constant snotty, insulting remarks about the readers of such ads. “I don’t know WHY we have to proofread these things; it’s not like anyone who buys this crap knows how to READ.” [general hilarity ensued …] Bigots. Nothing less.

    It was mind-boggling. I knew that New Yorkers could be snobs about small-town folk, but this wasn’t just snobbery; it was out and out bigotry, of the ugliest kind. And their reaction to Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy was bizarre as well: all of a sudden, they were making cutting, positively savage remarks about a teenager getting pregnant? having sex at 16? Wow. These were women and gay men who were giving the boys sexual favors of various kinds at age 14 themselves.

    Their excuse? “Well, they’re such hypocrites. Preaching about abstinence and she gets pregnant.” When I observed to one of these Tolerance and Love types that teenagers are always tough to control, and that I figured we all got into some scrapes when we were younger, she practically spat on me. And treated me like dirt thereafter, for that alone.

    As far as the intelligence question goes, I saw the same thing on jury duty. Emotion trumps reason, in 10 out of 12 cases, time after time. Eventually the emotions can be sorted through, by most jurors, and a fairly reasonable verdict can be reached, Unless a Leftist is on the jury (the unbearably self-righteous variety) who is convinced she or he is Horatio at the Bridge, ready to defend the Poor Soul on trial against all comers.

    They love that stuff. Glory in it, actually. Cheap “heroism,” and the illusion that their life is Significant.

50. “Passions are good servants but terrible masters”. Hatred is one of these passions, and it is OK to use it to your ends, but a great fallacy to allow it to direct your decisions and trump your logic. Great leader should be able to incite hatred when appropriate (like Churchill did), but never become a prey of his own propaganda, always usung rational analysis as a base for his decision making. “Anger control” does not mean you should always suppress your anger, but that you should unleash it only when you expect some benefit from it.

51. Beverly:
    As I said on an earlier thread, it’s a hatred for decency.

    There is something very, very wrong with those people.

52. This is a great blog. Neo’s postings are extremely well thought out and well written. Many of the commenters add much to the discussion here also. My life is richer because of this blog.

    I want to give several examples of my comment about people making excuses for large errors made by leaders on their side and criticizing the slightest negative things about the leaders “on the other side”. I include an example of how unimportant “style” is.

    I like Bush and am a conservative/libertarian, BUT:

    1. I remember Bush bragging that home ownership was the highest ever at some point during his administration. Could that possilbly be because of the policies of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac?

    2. The controversy over Obama’s “mom’s jeans” and how he threw a baseball was just silly.

    3. If I close my eyes and listen to Carter, I hear what is my favorite accent in the English language…the soft, soothing, almost musical sound of an upper middle class, educated person raised in Georgia speaking. But what he says is nonsense.

53. Brad, I don’t know what Taliban regime you’re talking about, but the relationship between the US government and the regime that ruled Afghanistan until late 2001 most certainly was not “peachy”, ever. The US never recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, never established diplomatic relations with it, and routinely criticized it in international fora, for everything from oppressing women and Hazaras, to engaging in heroin trafficking, to blowing up the Bamian Buddhas. All this was before 9/11, and in some cases, before AQ ever moved to Afghanistan. The US also had no particular reluctance to lob cruise missiles at AQ camps in Afghanistan after the 1998 Africa embassy bombings. So while the US didn’t decide to put an end to Mullah Omar’s rule until after 9/11, to say that we were just fine with the regime is flat wrong.

    I’m also waiting for you to cite a lie or two uttered by GW Bush . Not a statement made in good faith that turned out to be erroneous. A real, no-joke whopper that he knew to be false at the time he said it. As an example, in early 2003, there was general overall agreement that Iraq had at least some WMD. What, how much, and what, if anything, to do about it, were matters of intense debate, but that Saddam had retained some WMD capability was taken as a given. That’s a matter of public record. Thus, to say that Bush “lied” about Iraq’s WMD, i.e., that he knew that Saddam had in fact eliminated it, is to impute to Bush a level of knowledge that nobody–nobody–else in any branch of the US government known to have had at the time. So bring on Bush’s lies. I’m interested in seeing what I missed the first time around.

54. All my friends are Midwestern country conservatives.

    We fish and hunt together. We’re the bitter clingers, the NRA sticker on the pickup window types who get together for cookouts with our families and go to church on Sunday.

    I no longer associate with liberals or leftists, they are not worthy of my time. I stay away from urban areas whenever possible.

    On Thanksgiving we host dinner for thirty, some are distant relatives who come home. Half are urban liberals on my wife’s side. We are openly ridiculed for having mounted fish and deer heads on the walls, for having a few antique firearms on display and for not providing vegan entrees. Effen ingrates. They cannot resist making insulting comments but I keep my mouth shut.

    We don’t hate Obama. We don’t despise Obama. We’re not republicans. We’re definitely not democrats. We would rather not discuss politics with family members who do not agree with us.

    We simply have no respect for Obama and his kind. We only hope he goes away in two years without doing any more damage to our freedom, liberties and ability to earn an honest living.

55. In the postmodern there is no truth or reality world, one of the main intellectual constraints we suffer under is the idea that if there is something on one side that is wrong, there must be something on the other side that is equivalently wrong.

    Therefore, if people were “deranged” by Bush (and that was wrong); then anyone who does not like Obama is also “deranged” (and therefore wrong).

    The two wrongs then cancel each other out and the actually deranged side gets to be….not deranged anymore!

    In reality, not everything is the same thing.

    In reality, there truly are some things which should cause such a strong reaction against that they would mimic derangement but are really the sane response to the situation.

    When we see bullies beating up an innocent person, we should feel revulsion and try to act with force if necessary to stop it. When we see the innocent person fighting back or fighting to keep his property from thugs, we do not say he is just as bad as the thugs.

56. “Another possibility is that at a certain point in peoples’ lives they become so wedded, so invested in their own ignorance that to repudiate any of it, even a part of it, is like rejecting yourself.” Grackle points out that his list of Bush’s actual “lies” has, so far, been coming up short; I would add that the range and context of that “list” could be relevantly expanded.

    The Democrats beat the war drums against Saddam for at least a decade, over all the issues ranging from probable WMD to genocidal activities, ie.:

    http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20040623.htm

    http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

    Historical revisionism is one of the more insidious (and serious) long-term aspects of left-wing/islamist power politics; they count on poor group memory as they focus on what they want to in order to promote their (political) agenda. The complex is often reduced to the vague and simplistic (ie. Hope and Change, or Bush lied, people died) for propaganda purposes; in that context the leftist/islamist coalition have frequently been the foremost demagogues in modern history; and correspondingly the foremost mass murderers since 1900. Of course this part of the full “reality” context is anathema to the demagogues and their ignorant. Similarly, in “global warming”, per se, or for earlier eugenics proponents, but especially the nanny state, “central planner” culture; they simply have too much invested (emotionally and culturally) to easily open to an intellectually honest debate.

57. Beverly Says: Bigots. Nothing less…I knew that New Yorkers could be snobs about small-town folk, but this wasn’t just snobbery; it was out and out bigotry, of the ugliest kind.

    Worth repeating and emphasizing. So I did.

58. .J. formerly Jimmy J. Says:

    Many of the people that send these attacks to me are less thoughtful and somewhat less informed than the commenters here, but they are not ill mannered, ill tempered people. They have personalized the policies. That’s hard not to do. Most of his policies will have a deleterious affect on our lives. It requires a great deal of mental discipline to separate the bad policies from the man.

    Well now, see, I cannot separate the man from his policies. What you wrote sounds just like those in the Lubyanka who wrote to Stalin before their execution thinking, ‘if only Comrade Stalin knew what his minions were doing, he’d set things straight because I’m innocent and a loyal party member’. A healthy majority were innocent, but the purge was a part of Stalin’s plan for control, to make the randomness of the arrival of the black maria at 4 in the morning part and parcel of the terror.

    What Obama is doing to this Nation is deliberate, not incompetent (and once you see what is happening in that light, everything becomes clearer). Like the moral of the scorpion and the frog story, it’s Obama’s nature. And it is personal. The hatred Obama has for this Country, with its History of Freedom for the world, is stunning. For me, that hatred of me, of my family and what we have achieved, is personal. That’s the politics Obama plays, the Cloward-Piven strategy of attacking the individual, whether it be ‘the rich’, ‘big pharma’, ‘greedy bankers’, ‘big insurance’, Bible and gun clingers, Fox news, whomever. Obama picks his targets and freezes them. To make it personal is all he knows. But it is not ODS to plainly call out Obama as a communist, as a radical America-hating president. The facts of the case are on my side in that discussion. And those facts are far too numerous to list in a blog post.

59. Beverly and *gs:
    to be fair, those who are interested in hardware are equally prejudiced against people “of letters”. Or of “urban areas”, in general. Or of art and design profession. Or of new-yorkers.

    True, some of their perceptions are justified – but so is the perceptions of advertising industry types. I’m sure some of us had one or two enlightening conversations with construction worker or a plumber on the topic of orthography.

60. Tatyana
    We can get by better minus orthography than without plumbing.
    A.J. Liebling said the graphic arts were initiated by Stone Age man drawing free-form shapes in the snow with warm water.

    Anyway, at some point, many of us are going to be in the position of thinking about saying something like, “I don’t know. Wasn’t ME voted for these morons.” I hope none of us are capable of resisting the temptation.

61. I don’t believe that there is such a thing as ODS. There is nothing deranged about hating communism or communists. And Obama’s hate for me as a middle-class white man is palpable.

62. I never comment, but this is fascinating to me because I’m a “changer.” For me 9/11 was not the catalyst but instead my own religious conversion in 2003 caused a profound transformation that ended in a political as well as religious conversion. Prior to 2003, I had complete and total BDS. Complete and total. Bush engendered a blinding hatred, I was unable to listen to anything he said, I didn’t understand how people could like him at all, much less think he was a “leader.” I just HATED him. My memory of my hatred for him precedes any actual memories I have of Bush himself. I don’t know where the Once I “changed” it was like a veil lifted. I could see him and hear his words in a way I just didn’t before. I think the primary thought I had the first time I listened to him and didn’t hate him was “wow, he really means what he says.”

    Based on my experience, I would like to propose a hypothesis as to the nature of BDS: BDS is visceral psychological response conditioned by left-wing propaganda disseminated through the American education system.

    The two pillars of this propagandizing effort are, first, that unfettered sexual self-expression is an inherent good and also the basis of women’s equality, and therefore anyone who wants to stifle that expression (namely, conservative Christians) only want to keep women down and second, that America is evil (for various reasons), but mostly because it’s the home of racially based slavery. In this propaganda, thought crimes — racism and sexism — are bigger crimes than actual crimes like murder.

    The key trait of people who have been programmed this way (and remember, I’m speaking as someone who was like this) is that they have first been trained to not take any statement literally. Every statement is “deconstructed” to uncover the “real” meaning, which is always a desire by white men to extend their power through instituting racist or sexist practices. (For instance, pro-choice people don’t actually believe that pro-life people are concerned with the humanity and personhood of an unborn baby. They think that because abortion gives women sexual equality with men that’s why conservative Christians want to get rid of it).

    Second, all these people made a kind of mutual pact to police their thoughts and words for all traces of racism and sexism. So they think and speak in a kind of code and can instantly identify people who have not been sufficiently programmed by the fact that don’t speak in the code or seem aware of it.

    Bush became an instant personification of everything the propaganda taught BDS’ers was evil — pro American, pro-choice, Christian conservative.

    One final point. This left worldview is supposed to be progressive. So, leftist views about race, gender, class, and sex (and whatever new thing to put on the list), about America being evil will inevitably overcome the backwards racist and sexist and views of American superiority held by traditionalists like conservative Christians. But when Bush was elected by half the country AFTER Clinton had been in office for 8 years, people couldn’t believe Americans would actually reject the forward movement of leftism and elect someone who was so clearly socially and politically backwards, who believed that America was great and that traditional sexuality should be defended and did not talk in code. Also, there was no war or military threat against America to explain why some Americans would elect an anti-Leftist. Leftists understand that most Americans will always succumb to fear mongering if there is any credible threat against American lives.

    I don’t think the “stealing” of the election was any kind of “cause” of BDS. What it did was justify the BDS that already existed. “I KNEW those traditionalist racist, sexist, hegemonic, right-wingers just wanted power, see they stole that election.”

    Finally, for the hard-core BDS sufferer (hand raised) when 9/11 happened, the first coherent thought was “oh great, now we’ll never get rid of this guy,” or, “oh great, now we’re going to have to put up with a lot of military pro-America jingoism.” 9/11 and Islamic terrorism is completely invisible to BDSers as an actual threat or problem. The real danger is that it gives traditionalists an opportunity to assert American military dominance (and therefore America’s racist, sexist, and other backward views over the rest of the world). Further, because thought crimes are the real crimes, actual physical threats — like deaths caused by Islamic terrorism — just aren’t that big a deal for them.

    That’s my hypothesis. I don’t have Obama derangement syndrome. I think a key characteristic of BDS is that it extends not just to Bush but to people who support Bush. I don’t like Obama, I disagree with him, but I have real sympathy for his supporters. I understand why people voted for him, I even wished that I could have voted for him (who wouldn’t want to vote for the first black president?) but I couldn’t because it was very clear that he was a socialist and would pursue a radical agenda that I disagreed with.

63. Theres an area where we see this irrational hatred duplicated. In sports teams. Where what we see is a form of throwback tribalism based on nothing more than geography and a subsequent learned distrust of those deemed the “other”.

    I’ll submit that in ideology, like sports, you’ll see this phenomenon grow in direct proportion to the number of uneducated, mis-educated, too narrowly educated and the flat out indoctrinated.

    Which explains how a 13 year old urban youth who can’t name the mayor of his city somehow hates GWB’s guts.

64. texexec Says:
    November 14th, 2010 at 6:57 am

    2. The controversy over Obama’s “mom’s jeans” and how he threw a baseball was just silly.

    I wouldn’t call it “controversial”.
    Fact 1: He looked silly in those pants.
    Fact 2: He threw like a girl.

    Having said that, if I were to throw out a first pitch, I would probably embarrass myself. At least I wouldn’t wear mom jeans while doing it.

    Which brings to mind something I’ve wondered about. Traditionally, the first pitch was a simple, dignified ceremony. The President (or other dignitary) would be dressed in a suit and tie and would lob the ball a short distance from his seat in the stands to the home team’s catcher. No athletic ability was required or expected. I don’t know when it morphed into the dignitary having to go out on the field dressed in athletic gear and throw from the pitcher’s mound.

    Wikipedia has an article about ceremonial first pitches, including a chronology of Presidential first pitches. The first to do it was Taft in 1910. It says that Clinton was the first to successfully reach the plate from the pitcher’s mound in 1993. There is a photo of Reagan throwing from the mound in 1988; presumably his pitch didn’t reach the plate. It doesn’t say who was the first President to attempt throwing from the mound, though.

    There is a link to an amusing video about the 10 worst first pitches at the bottom of the Wiki page. No, Obama isn’t in it. I think T. Rex did a creditable job considering his nearly useless arms and the fact that he had to scoop up the ball and heave it using his mouth.

65. “”BDS is visceral psychological response conditioned by left-wing propaganda disseminated through the American education system.””
    Elizabethe

    Amen. I’d just add pop culture media to that mix and their relentless drive to push the ridicule power of fashion into the area of accepted thought and expression.

66. Richard Aubrey,

    Nobody would agree more than me that correct plumbing is more important than correct orthography! Dismissing graphic arts, however, you risk rejecting whole fields of engineering and architecture. But that’s an aside.

    The point of my comment is not “what’s more important for survival”, but existence of justified contempt on both sides. See CZ’ comment above, or repetitive negative comments towards newyorkers in general coming from “inner country”.

67. The psychological explanation of liberals reaching cognitive dissonance when discussing conservative principles probably has some merit. They hate being wrong, so they hate the object that is telling them they are wrong.

    There is another explanation with equal weight however. Leftist political theory reaches a sort of utopia at its extremes. Problems are solved, suffering is no longer. Republicans use their evil powers of persuasion to prevent the utopia from occurring. By definition, they must be evil for doing so – and very deserving of hatred. If the said Republican politician does these things while being good natured and humble, they are especially deserving of hatred, as they shouldn’t be so happy and resolute in the destruction of the utopia.

    Of course, the only way to rebut this point of view is to convince the liberal that the utopia really isn’t possible in the first place. Which runs into all kinds of psychological problems as described by the other comments above.

68. WaltJ, I just got back to this thread.

    I’ll simply point out we armed the taliban and other forces in Afghanistan when it suited our purpose and then go and compose a longer reply.

69. One feature of Orwell’s dystopic future society in “1984” was the “Two Minutes of Hate” in which the citizens of Oceania joined in a choreographed expression of hate against Emmanuel Goldstein and everything he represented. BDS is essentially Two Minutes of Hate directed against George Bush.

    “Within the book, the purpose of ‘the hate’ is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a censored lifestyle.” – Wikipedia

    I don’t believe this to be entirely correct.

    In primitive religion such displays of organized and focused hate has traditionally been the prelude to human sacrifice. Such hate is fomented not simply to displace the participant’s anger frustration at the inequities inherent to any society, but to create the shared emotional pitch necessary to tip the community into acts of sacred violence. It is by means of acts of sacred violence that the tensions within the society are discharged and social harmony restored.

    This is a human tendency found in all human societies, and is a tool of State for a nation in crisis. In Socialist states is in constant use as these states depend on a chronic sense of crisis for survival. What the American Left is doing is using this device, the dehumanization and demonization of enemies, as a means to develop cohesion among its adherents. Ironically, this ginning up of hate by the Left is projected on to their enemies, and becomes a self reinforcing feedback loop.

    Meanwhile, those against whom this mechanism is turned become desensitized to it, “Oh, look, there they go again.” There is a problem, however. Whipping up a mob into a lynching frenzy without a lynching leaves them essentially unsatisfied, and when done repeatedly not only trains them to react to certain cues with instant fury, but pumps the level of fury up by not releasing it in an act of violence. It is entirely conceivable that at some time in the future one or more of these demagogues will whip the mob up and either be unable to control it, or worse, having primed it, deliberately set it to explode in murderous violence.

70. Brad,

    We did not arm the Taliban. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, after assassinating its president, we played the Great Game and backed the Mujahadeen against them, and bin Laden was just one of many in the Mujahadeen; they were not the Taliban. If we supposedly backed the Taliban, while are their forces constantly seen walking around using AK-47s and Soviet RPGs?

71. RickZ says,

    “What Obama is doing to this Nation is deliberate, not incompetent”

    “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon

    I’m still looking for evidence that the destruction of America’s economy is deliberate.

    OTH.

    My little brother, a 15 year public high school teacher, says government is simply a tool to distribute income fairly. When asked how the government financed itself before the 1913 passage of the 16th Amendment, his response was, “I don’t know anything about that, I’m a WORLD history teacher.”

    Guard your children.

72. while = why

    … why are their forces …

73. bbthevidiot,

    Keep looking. Because whatever I’d tell you, you’d not believe as the evidence is right there before you, plain to see.

    But just for starters, do you not see how the so-called Stimulus Package (which had to be done now! Emergency! Emergency!) was merely a way to rob the US government of taxpayer money to pay off Obama’s cronies in the unions, cronies to which he was indebted by helping get him elected? Do you not think robbing the US Treasury for such a scheme is not deliberate?

    Oh, and let’s not forget Obama working for ACORN, that pillar of tax-thieving corruption. Obama is very proud of his work for ACORN; he’s said so many times already. But ACORN’s corruption is all an accident, right, and has nothing to do with Obama? (Just like Obama had nothing to do with the housing crash, even though he represented ACORN against CitiBank to force the bank to make home loans to people who could not financially qualify for those loans or face ‘the wrath of the people’. In some places, that’s called extortion.

    If Obama had not had super, veto proof majorities in both Houses of Congress, he would never have been able to run his scams schemes. The Democrat Party is guilty of aiding and abetting Obama’s corruption. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

    And if you think the Obama Administration corruption is not deliberate and is not directed by the O-man himself, then I have this bridge spanning the East River for sale. Why do you think Republicans were shut out of all input meetings on legislation? Can’t let the corrupt cat out of the bag before the law is passed (so that we can find out what’s in it).

74. elizabethe and Tamquam:
    Excellent comments. Tamquam’s last sentence is chilling but all too likely, I’m afraid.

    However, I do believe that the 2000 election played a role in BDS. It’s obvious to me that the Democrats fully intended to steal that election using their time-tested tactic of endless recounts and “finding” new votes for Gore. When they were thwarted, they went ballistic. With perfect projection, they then accused the Republicans of stealing it. They said that if only there weren’t so many conservatives on the Supreme Court, Gore would have won. Uh huh.

75. Democrats don’t like to admit this, but mostly what defines the party is abortion. If Bush had been pro-abortion (I won’t call it pro-choice because there’s one person involved who has no choice), they would have rationized a lot of what he did.

    People around my age (67) were so tramatized by out of wedlock pregnacies that they can’t think straight. When the pill came out and then abortion legal, they thought now my daughter or any other young girl will not have to suffer as (fill in the blank) did. And they (we) also revelled in promiscuous sex.

    And that’s all that matters. Clinton or Gore (whose family is just as much tied to oil as Bushs’s) would have done the same thing with Iraq and they would have been behind him all the way, plus they would have defended him about the WMD’s

76. And elizabethe, please comment more often. That was superb, and I can’t really add anything to it or find anything to criticize.

77. RickZ;

    I’m not trying to hijack the BDS/ODS thread, but we could use some more actual proof that the destruction is deliberate.

    What would be done differently?

    http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/08/if-barack-obama-was-intentionally.html

    As far as BDS/ODS, I’ve not heard the same garbage directed to O as I’ve heard to Bush.

    The media keeps telling me racists are the reason for ODS.

    They also tell me Bush lied.

    I’ve yet to see actual proof that Obama wants our economy to tank beyond stupidity.

    Reagan fixed things, Obama paid off the goons. But I still can’t find deliberateness.

78. bbthevidiot:
    Regarding Obama’s deliberateness, I refer you to this 2008 American Thinker article:

    Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

    That was published more than a month before the election.

79. Donna,

    Thank you. You hit the square nail with a round hammer. Why are the D’s so nailed to abortion? It is a religion so incomprehendle to me. I see thousands of future Einsteins and Dvoraks. They see thousands of women punished with a baby. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbZJYWjkAPo

    Our President has a side.

    It’s “a time to choose”. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganatimeforchoosing.htm

80. I was going to make one long post, but instead I decided it would be best to break it up into two parts and rewrite it.

    First, about Bush lying:
    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd

    I would think that surrounding yourself with only people who will confirm your prejudices and outright ignoring information that would lead one to doubt one’s conclusion is a form of lying. It’s true that Bush never said Saddam HAD… (that was left to Cheney and other neo-cons such as Kristol) but he consistently expressed that he had been told, that we had reason to believe, and etc, and the alleged threat of Saddam developing these weapons or having these weapons already was the first and most important reason given for the invasion. The American people were trusting that Bush was using the best intelligence sources available at the time and not trying to “stack the deck” in favor of a decision (like Obama’s so-called “Catfood” commission is stacked by appointees with a given ideological bent) that was already made. I don’t think he met the burden of that expectation, and thus in my opinion he used a deliberately deceptive process to get what he wanted in the first place. Of course it’s really possible that Bush believed that it was likely that Iraq had WMD but even if one believes that, it only calls his judgment into question. Since I’m more cynical about politicians then most and I don’t tend to think Bush was a dummy, I tend to think he deliberately sat things up to get what he wanted. 911 was also a good excuse.

    As to why he *really* did it or at the minimum what OTHER reasons there could be that were not mentioned but that I think played on Bush’s mind:

    A. Iraq was threatening to go off the “dollar standard”, thus threatening the reserve currency status of the US dollar.
    B. The US had other objectives in the middle east and Saddam while useful to us in the 70’s and 80’s was in the way
    C. Oil. Of course. Iraq might have (no one is sure, but the Iraqis claim it) to have some of the largest reserves available anywhere in the world.

81. Assorted comments:

    1.

    I hate both Bush Jr and Obama.

    Interesting. I don’t hate either one. At this juncture, I actually feel sorry for Obama (while despising what he is doing to the country). Imagine the nightmare of first being fawned over all your life for no discernible reason apart from skin color, and coming to believe all of the gushing hype about you…then being elevated to a lofty position where the gushing hype doesn’t help, where you (and all objective onlookers) realize that you’re hopelessly over your head – and you have no choice but to endure several more years of failure and embarrassment. /shudder

    2. CJD, so she says terrorists must hate us for a reason? Americans hate the terrorists right back — what is our reason? Or are only our enemies the ones with valid reasons?

    3.

    And their reaction to Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy was bizarre as well: all of a sudden, they were making cutting, positively savage remarks about a teenager getting pregnant? having sex at 16? Wow.

    Kinda like Stanley Ann Dunham in that respect, no?

    4.

    Having said that, if I were to throw out a first pitch, I would probably embarrass myself.

    I would embarrass myself too, and I’m a pitcher. Hell, I bet Nolan Ryan would embarrass himself too. Unless you’ve loosened up a bit, the first throw or two is always funky, awkward, and inaccurate, because your muscles are stiff.

    5. Having said that, Obama and before him Kerry made especially pathetic throws, and obviously would have done so had they warmed up for hours beforehand. Kerry had all of his fingers on the ball, fer cryin’ out loud!

    5.

    Democrats don’t like to admit this, but mostly what defines the party is abortion.

    Apropos comment #3, the irony of ironies is that if abortion had been legal in 1960, Obama would almost certainly have wound up in a pail on an obstetrican’s floor. I wonder if Obama has ever reflected on that thought.

    6.

    At first I thought the real reason we were there was related in some way to an oil pipeline whose name escapes me. Now that it turns out there’s probably over a trillion dollars of rare-earth metals extractible there, I think I see the real reason. It’s a part of the global game between America and China for control of oil and rare-earth minerals.

    Please. This is silly dorm room historical materialism cum conspiracy theory. Bush probably doesn’t know what a rare earth is, and I absolutely guarantee that Obama doesn’t.

82. Tatyana, I see your point–cf. Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week–but I am taking Beverly at her literal word: “out and out bigotry, of the ugliest kind.” I find it hard to associate that with the hardware types with whom I’ve occasionally crossed paths.

83. Occam:

    If you are referring to the joke that is their education, I partly agree with you though Bush’s family has been involved in the Oil extraction business for a few generations now. I think he might know something. Obama probably knows what articles of the Constitution he violates on a daily basis and nothing else.
    I merely assume the Presidential advisors, or the Join Chiefs, or some federal agency head or even a nice campaign donor passes on some of these potential issues to the President from time to time. In short if enough “important ” people inside and outside of the government have an interest anywhere or see a vulnerability that could threaten their money or power I’m sure the President is made aware of it. I don’t assume either of these two bozos were actual scholars, let alone scholars of the real world.

84. The BDS-afflicted are obsessed with Mr. Bush, for the same reason they and others are also obsessed with Ms. Palin …

    … they know that whenever and wherever an unapologetic conservative voice like W or Sarah gains credibility, these critics will no longer be viewed as the intellectually-superior Best and Brightest they THINK they themselves are …

    … but at best, just adherents to just another alternative worldview; or at worst, the blindly-faithful and highly-invested disciples of a Cult of Progressive Conventional Wisdom that is now being proven wrong by fact and history.

    It is quite unsettling to have what you have repeatedly thought and expressed as “intelligent” and “sophisticated” shown up in objective terms as fundamentally flawed … especially by those you consider “simple-minded, ignorant, fanatics” …

    … and also come to the realization that these “simple” minds are now going to be credible enough to get in the way of “authority” taking from someone else to give you what you “deserve” … and/or these “simple” minds are going to be able to harsh your mellow with credible criticism of any pet vice you may have — even though your freedom to indulge in that pet vice is not threatened.

    From what I have observed, a LOT of the BDS, particularly from the basis of the anti-war viewpoint, is in fact based upon the two realizations above … it was not really about the war, except that the inevitable errors and setbacks of war are a convenient club to beat down a voice you oppose for other, unrelated reasons.

    With Ms. Palin, we see the syndrome extended into parts of the professional/political complex, even allegedly-conservative ones … because of a more base motivation; the pros know that whenever and wherever she gains credibility, she proves that their services (i.e. their meal tickets) are no longer required to gain a voice in our political process, and they can go the way of the buggy whip.

    The critical difference between the W/Palin critics, and those of us who oppose Mr. Obama, come down to one division … intellectual honesty, which has been eroded on one side of the debate by Progressives’ embrace of ends-justify-the-means relativism as a feature, not a bug … and leads them to persist in defending the indefensible, even at the expense of intellectual integrity (ex: East Anglia CRU) in order to avoid facing the truth that …

    Despite their erudition …
    And academic pedigree …
    The Best and the Brightest look instead
    Like a box of dim bulbs to me …

    … and that often, those who think and express themselves in “simple” terms, without the trappings of Progressive “intellect” are often the most profound.

85. I would think that surrounding yourself with only people who will confirm your prejudices and outright ignoring information that would lead one to doubt one’s conclusion is a form of lying.

    Tough standard. Very tough standard. Now let’s apply it to, say, AGW proponents, to whom it applies a forteriori.

    It’s true that Bush never said Saddam HAD… (that was left to Cheney and other neo-cons such as Kristol) but he consistently expressed that he had been told, that we had reason to believe, and etc, and the alleged threat of Saddam developing these weapons or having these weapons already was the first and most important reason given for the invasion.

    God, I’m so tired of hearing this arguments from lefties. Democrats given the same information as Bush drew exactly the same conclusion that he did. YouTube is replete with clips of prominent Democrats harumphing that of course “Saddam poses a severe threat, and has WMDs.”

    Moreover, consider the counterfactual scenario: intelligence sources report WMDs, but Bush vacillates because there is no absolute proof, and some blue city (NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA, SF) ends up a smoldering crater. Lefties wouldn’t be howling their heads off about that? In that case, they’d have reason, in my opinion. This was a case where the precautionary principle clearly should be applied.

    A. Iraq was threatening to go off the “dollar standard”, thus threatening the reserve currency status of the US dollar.

    Is this a joke?

    B. The US had other objectives in the middle east and Saddam while useful to us in the 70’s and 80’s was in the way

    What objectives would those be? Saddam is no longer with us, so we should be free to pursue those “other objectives,” and they should be manifest by now, yes? Help me to discern what those were.

    C. Oil. Of course. Iraq might have (no one is sure, but the Iraqis claim it) to have some of the largest reserves available anywhere in the world.

    We have occupied Iraq for years now. Question for the cynical and world-weary who think they alone have divined the grand plan: Where is the effing oil bounty you people keep talking about? Answer: we’re still buying oil, at market prices, on the international oil market. Just like we were before invading Iraq, except now we’re paying rather more, and have fought a war in the meantime.

    This is of a piece with allegations that Bush invaded Iraq to make money for Halliburton and Cheney. Halliburton’s stock chart belies the former; Halliburton actually hasn’t done very well over the last decade. And Cheney took a 99% pay cut (from ca. $20 MM/y to $200 K/y) to become Vice President. Fascinating strategy for making money.

    Bottom line: it is important to distinguish agitprop from reality.

86. Occam’s Beard Says:

    Hell, I bet Nolan Ryan would embarrass himself too.

    Um, no.

87. A little something I’ve used to “serenade” the anti-war left in the past (with thanks and apologies to Bob Dylan for the tune …)

    You said that this war is a war for oil
    It’s greed at the point of a gun
    But if we really wanted to take that oil
    We’d have stayed there in 1991
    And I guess that you’ll just have to deal with the fact
    It’s returned to the people of Iraq
    Your protests, my friends
    Sound much like breaking wind
    Your protests sound much like breaking wind

    You compare Bush to Hitler, say election’s a fraud
    You treat him like Attilla the Hun
    But we see right through you, we know you hate Bush
    ’cause he acts and he gets the job done
    and that he will not take from those who work to get ahead
    and subsidize those who just seek “fun”
    Your protests, my friends
    Sound much like breaking wind
    Your protests sound much like breaking wind

    Yes we see right through you and your calls for peace
    Right through to your core of disdain
    For the principles that have made America great
    And the freedom you say you proclaim
    If you really want peace, then protest the terrorists
    who crash planes and slaughter men like lambs …
    Your protests, my friends
    Sound much like breaking wind
    Your protests sound much like breaking wind

88. Re rare earths, there’s not a person in a thousand who, sans Google, has the faintest idea what rare earths are, or why they are of any importance.

89. A commentor says: First, about Bush lying:

    Then links to this site: http://tinyurl.com/y8rsech

    I read the article linked to by the commentor. It’s an interesting bit of writing, full of anonymous second-hand sources and implication.

    The author of the article writes that two anonymous sources heard that Tenet once told Bush that Saddam had no WMD but that Bush discounted it because other sources through other intelligence groups, both foreign and domestic, indicated that Saddam WAS trying to develop WMD.

    If this were true, and we have no concrete evidence that it is, perhaps Bush was cognizant of the fact that the CIA has NEVER guessed right on any nation’s nuclear development progress. The CIA has been wrong on every nuclear weapons development assessment they’ve ever issued — from Russia just after WW2 on through North Korea, the latest nation known to have acquired nuclear weapons capability.

    Let’s say I’m the POTUS. I have several intelligence sources that say one thing and one source that says the opposite. Hmmm … I think I would believe the preponderant of the intelligence over the one source that has always been wrong on the subject.

    At any rate, true or not true, the link doesn’t pass my requirement. I need quotes of words uttered by Bush, not mere intelligence community gossip. I need a link to quotes of Bush himself lying. So far I haven’t found any.

90. *gs,
    I have been in the company of “hardware types” since my birth. To think of it, I’m a “hardware type” myself, being an engineer and designer and all that – and in a sense that when I need to select hardware for specifications I don’t look at adverts, I turn to “boring” catalogs and buyers’ guides.
    And I have observed, on “hardware” side of the trenches, many examples of unsubstantiated hatred towards a guy in glasses (variant:in a hat, &&&) – as long as it represent a “learned” person of incomprehensible/frivolous area of study (in hardware type’ opinion).

    As many perceptive commenters said above, sweeping uninformed hatred is comfortable psychologically and earns you uncontested “camaraderie” points. I’m just saying it is common everywhere, not only on left side of the divide.
    I have experienced it firsthand, coming from religious conservatives learning of my unapologetic atheism. All the signs and motivation, so amply described by Otiose, Bob f.V. and especially Tamquam, are the same.

    Remember you agreed with me on avoidance of crowds, of any ideological platform? One of the reasons is their collective fury they could be made to unleash at any second by a mere code word, be it “Sarah Palin” or “New-Yorker”.

    As to accusation of “bigotry” – personally, I don’t find it insulting at all; when I’m called bigot for my opinion of muslims I just laugh and feel vindicated.

91. Wasn’t Rare Earth a band at one time? 🙂

92. Rickl, Ryan clearly had warmed up a bit before throwing. No one – no one – throws 80 mph right out of the chute. Not even twenty year olds do that; active ballplayers show up at the park hours before a game to get loose first, so that they can run, hit, and throw without injuring themselves.

    Moreover, Ryan was legendary for his preparation for pitching. (For example, he used to hit the exercise bike after pitching, regardless of the hour or travel schedule, and habitually was in the gym every morning at 6 am.) The idea that he’d stand up stone cold and throw is almost inconceivable, particularly since everyone would expect him to throw well.

    (Btw, the same is true of W’s throw; he’d obviously warmed up beforehand too.)

93. Grackle, exactly; it’s the typical left-wing double standard….

    “On December 16, 1998, President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day missile and bombing attack on Iraq. “I acted quickly because, as my military advisors stressed, the longer we waited, the more time Saddam would have to disburse his forces and protect his arsenal,” Clinton explained in his December 19 radio address to the nation. “Our mission is clear: to degrade Saddam’s capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction.”43 (It should be noted that on July 27, 2003 President Clinton assessed the effectiveness of Desert Fox. He stated: “When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn’t know.” )44″ (referenced in my earlier comment)

94. Wasn’t Rare Earth a band at one time?

    Dunno. I don’t follow Chinese music.

95. Ritchie The Riveter:
    Hey, that’s not too bad, and I’m a hardcore Dylan fan. In fact I just saw him on Friday night.

96. Tatyana Says:

    “I’m sure some of us had one or two enlightening conversations with construction worker or a plumber on the topic of orthography.”

    Actually, whenever I find studies of knowledge that are split between college graduates and non college educated blue collar workers… they usually come out equally. And/or universities teach very little and some everyday workers teach themselves…

97. Many good comments, I’d just like to add to the elizabethe’s idea of speaking in code, that not only does GWB (as well as Reagan, and now Palin) have a firm grasp of his beliefs, he has no fear in communicating them (“with is or against us”, “Axis of evil”), and will not abandon them when things get tough or because the right people don’t agree with him.

    So much of what passes for intelligence and insight by the elite today is a lot of nuanced, wishy-washy pseudo-statements that are intended to be interpreted a number of ways so as to give the speaker cover later, or to appease various interests. GWB did not even attempt to do this, let alone value it, and that surely ticked a lot of people off.

    Also, WGB is a confident man, a happy warrior. The fact that he feels no embarrassment for his “backward” values and feels no need to compromise on what he feel is important (such as his unapologetic support of waterboarding). Lefties sensed early on with him (as well as Palin) that he had no intention of ever even trying to join their club, that he lived his life his way, mistakes and all, and didn’t depend on the approval or accolades of others to validate him.

    If you think about the Republicans/conservatives that lefties adore, you see they are exact opposites of GWB in every way.

98. 1. Tatyana, back in the days when I interacted with hardware types, they usually perceived, however grudgingly, that hardware and analysis were mutually dependent. I gather that your experience is different.

    2. Remember you agreed with me on avoidance of crowds, of any ideological platform? I don’t remember, but I take your word for it because it’s consistent with my overall attitude.

    3. Tamquam cited 1984’s “Two Minutes of Hate”. Mao’s struggle sessions

    4. J.J. formerly Jimmy J. Says: gs suggests that the tendency to feel real hate and resort to name calling and worse against those with whom we don’t agree may be hard wired into humans.

    I also wonder if we aren’t hard-wired to formulate differences or pretexts–“greatly to find quarrel in a straw,” if you will–so that those (evolutionary) collective mechanisms of aggression and defense come into play.

    (5. I have errands and won’t be back for an hour or few.)

99. “Mao’s struggle sessions” -> “Mao’s struggle sessions come to mind.”

100. *thomass,

     hence the word “some” that I employed…

101. Incidentally, about Bush’s lies and the Salon article: “Both the French intelligence service and the CIA paid Sabri hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least $200,000 in the case of the CIA) to give them documents on Saddam’s WMD programs. “The information detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program, that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon within two years if they had fissile material, which they didn’t, and that they had no chemical or biological weapons,” one of the former CIA officers told me. ”

     May I suggest that had that information been used to drive the Iraq war policy, and it had backfired several or more years down the road, then the Democrats would have blamed Bush for being naive enough to allow policy to be driven by bad intelligence from a known Saddam operative. According to the Democrat’s rationale, apparently bribing known dedicated enemy operatives would be a significantly more reliable intelligence method than, say, waterboarding. I have a quaint little time share for sale if you’re interested….

102. *gs – all valid points.
     on p.2: it was here – I remembered because it was the day of *kolnai’s appearance and rather interesting thread; your comment is @2:14

103. elizabethe
     Thank you for a very cogent comment. Your reasoning about BDS resonates with me.

     Beverly
     Thank you for describing the bigoted mind set of your liberal co-workers. Typical of people who know they know it all.

     Rick Z.
     You make some good points about Stalin and his techniques. Thus far I am not convinced that Obama is Stalin. In fact, he seems so inept and obviously out of his depth that, if he is trying to perform a Cloward-Piven, it is a huge failure. I believe that he is, in many ways, a gift that keeps on giving to the conservative cause.

104. The problem for a lot of college educated seems to be in mistakenly thinking the real world is structured like academia. It isn’t. In school your value is determined by a handful of teachers who grade you on what you know. In the real world, 300 million people could care less what you know. They want to know what you can provide and they are the sole arbiters of how much you get rewarded or it.

105. Occam:

     No, it’s not a joke.
     Here ya go:
     http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000911

     It’s a potential reason that explains a lot of our behavior over there. That doesn’t make it right,but it doesn’t allow you to dismiss it out of hand.

106. Wasn’t Rare Earth a band at one time?

     That was Rare Earth, Wind and Fire.

107. Libby, you are right on target with your comments …

     … Progressives not only like to leave themselves an out, they LOVE expressing themselves in ways that delve into every angels-on-pinheads detail and possible caveat. They think that such “deep” thinking validates their self-image of an enlightened, intelligent, nuanced thinker … even when it leads to the management malady called paralysis-by-analysis and true “progress” grinds to a halt.

     They don’t see that their literary/oratorical gyrations make them look like the flashy swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark …. only to get even more irrational when a “simple-minded” conservative emulates Indiana Jones and shoots them down with one simple truth, then leaves them in the dust and moves forward.

     And, they conflate confidence in one’s convictions with arrogance … but THEY would never be so bold as to claim that confidence for themselves? Yeah, right … that is, when they don’t just go and “fundamentally transform” our government to assure that they, as the Best and Brightest, control as much of our society as they can, because they are the “smartest people around” according to their own eyes.

     But let a simple-minded conservative call the Soviet Union an Evil Empire … or demand that their leader “TEAR DOWN THIS WALL” (a line that said conservative re-inserted in the speech, after his advisers removed the line, through THREE revisions) … or stand firm on his convictions in the face of the greatest terrorist attack in this nation’s history, and take the fight to TWO sets of enemies as a warrior instead of a cop complete with Miranda rights and the Exclusionary Rule … and they decry American “arrogance”.

     Problem is, they have the arrogance to believe that they are omniscient enough to manage 300 million lives FOR us … but lack confidence in the principles this nation was founded upon; principles proven sound, time and again, throughout the history of this nation and the history of other nations who adopt some or all of them as their own …

     … principles that, if one has confidence in their validity, would lead a nation to understand that … WMD or no WMD … Saddam was a fundamental threat to the liberty of the Iraqi people AND to free people anywhere in this day and age, was NEVER legitimate as a leader, and therefore it was justified and prudent to take him down.

     … instead in persisting in a moral equivalence that treats dictator and democrat with the same deference with respect to their sovereignty, leaving them in a position to run amok.

     That … NOT the direct/timely/resolute/decisive use of American military force … is how you get “wars without end”.

108. Yes, Rare Earth was a band … their songs “I Just Want to Celebrate” and “Get Ready” come to mind.

     Earth, Wind and Fire was another band … a class act. Too bad they had to play disco to make a living.

109. Brad,
     WMD themselves weren’t the only element in the desire for regime change. Saddam was playing a huge game with the world by not complying with UN inspections and by using sanctions as an excuse for starving his own people while blaming us (and, no doubt, using this to further inflame anti-American feelings in the Muslim world). He was determined to come out of things bragging that he had outfoxed the West and that he, not bin Laden, was the legitimate leader of the Caliphate. We also suspected the oil for food bribery, although the extent wasn’t known till later. He got CNN to alter their reporting. He allowed terrorists to train within the country. The man was an egomaniacal sociopath and much of the world wanted to appease him as long as only the US suffered. So what were we to do? We sent troops there to let him know we were serious. Should we have brought them home for a few weeks while Hans Blix tried to appeal to his honor (I actually heard him say this on TV). Look, the world loves the UN so long as it requires nothing of it and so long as the US is willing to be a scapegoat for all the world’s problems. Bush said, “Enough!”

     Sleazebags like Gerhard Gazprom Schroeder opposed him for political reasons like French goodwill and keeping the German pacifists on his side (his opposition to the war was announced at a campaign rally), but his own spooks thought Saddam had WMD. Meanwhile Gerd has gone on to his Russian job and is setting up business meetings with Iran. Such is the world opinion that Obama wants to restore.

110. Elizabethe – add my vote to those who would be delighted to see you post more. I just started posting here a few weeks ago, and the company is (said in my most aristocratic tone) to die for.

     Your reflections were astute, and very well-put. Count me impressed.

111. No, it’s not a joke.

     Yeah it is.
     From your cite: “Baghdad currently is selling about $60 million in crude a day, about 5 percent of the world’s oil exports.”

     For comparison, California is spending $40 million per day on unemployment benefits. Maybe CA should denominate benefits in euros too.

     It is to laugh. Most ridiculous assertion I’ve seen in a long time.

112. Occam:

     Oil is important in both terms of supply AND price.
     For one, if you don’t have it your country collapses, simple as that. So sometimes merely securing a SUPPLY is reason enough in itself.

     For two, IRAQ changing its petro currency from the dollar to something else would be important if OTHER nations followed suit. You know that our status the world’s “reserve currency” is what enables us to offset our debts.

     Now maybe I’m misunderstanding your argument or you are misunderstanding mine, but I see either of both of these as potentially legitimate reasons to go into Iraq.

113. Oil is important in both terms of supply AND price.

     Yes, but irrelevant to the point, that Iraq’s putative move to euros provoked invasion.

     For two, IRAQ changing its petro currency from the dollar to something else would be important if OTHER nations followed suit.

     So…we’d have to invade them too? Or we’ll invade any country that suggests pricing oil in another currency? It’s a silly suggestion, and classic agitprop.

     The dollar’s status as a reserve currency promotes American interests because it means oil prices don’t fluctuate according to market forces and exchange rates, but only according to the former.

     But to suggest that we’d invade a country to obviate the outside chance of a country’s pricing oil in another currency is ludicrous, for any number of reasons.

     For one, if the dollar’s utility as a reserve currency were to come into serious question – which thanks to Buraq is increasingly likely – any number of countries would be thinking about jettisoning it as the reserve currency, a movement that could hardly be stopped by military or any other action. (See runs on currencies in the 80s, a Soros favorite, which even the UK could not stop.)

     Already there have been calls to change to a basket of currencies. So far, no invasions of those making the suggestion.

114. Brad,
     There’s a pretty good discussion of all the aspects involved in the decision to invade Iraq, here:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War

     There were, I believe, something like 23 reasons cited for invading Iraq, not just WMD. It was the MSM that over publicized the WMD issue to the exclusion of many other issues. Why? IMO, because the mention of WMDs gripped people’s attention and because some loud liberal voices were makning the case that there were no WMDs. Made for good copy and could, they hoped, be an issue to use against Bush. Voila, when there were no active WMDs found, it was used to hammer Bush for the rest of his presidency.

115. If the Keynesians in charge at the Fed are allowed to follow through with their QE plans, a lot of countries will be abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency.

116. Occam:

     You are missing something.
     Oil prices are denominated in dollars.
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_warfare

     Now whatever you might think about that school of economic /policy thought, it’s a fact we can’t stop the world if other big countries decide to go off the dollar. We might be able to prevent it in a bunch of smaller countries though, and in any case even delaying it might be a good thing for our country.

     Or not. Just a hypthesis I threw out there. I’m not wedded to it, I just wanted to know why you dismissed it so easily.

117. Elizabethe, TamQuam, Ritchie and so many more..
     This is my first time ever posting a comment. Just found this site today – great discussion!

     I, too have a very intelligent – above 1400 on SATs, passes BAR on first attempt, sister who has somehow defied her upbringing and DNA and is so uber-liberal. She name calls – sent a response email to all Dad’s conservative friends calling them “privledged white men”. My father put himself and young family through med school, and graduated #2 in his class. She went to one of the country’s best private schools, flew in Liar jets to the Carribean, skiied Aspen, etc. every year. Who is privledged? She is no doubt a smart girl – but her politics are so irrational to me. She will be blaming Bush until her last breath. Of course, she, like the Obamas and many other liberal elites is a lawyer. She has never taken an econ or biz class, and is too young to have paid any real taxes. The irony is her boyfriend is an officer in the military and he is more liberal than she! Happy I don’t have to spend Thanksgiving with her – it would be an ugly family dinner!

118. The whole Iraq thing drives me crazy. Before the war everybody in sight (Clintons, Kerry, Rockefeller etc) were citing dire warnings about Saddam and his WMD’s. Imagine being President Bush, barely a year after 9/11: if he left Saddam in place and Saddam actually pulled a similar attack, Bush would never have heard the end of it….You were warned….ignored all the signs….two in a row etc etc. I think those who turned on him and put their political ambitions above the country’s safety were the ones who should have been called liars.

119. Tatyana and Richard Aubrey on correct plumbing vs. correct orthography: Most of the current distrust of “intellectuals” is based on their long track record of hostility to America and to American values. If academia had not turned into a swamp of left-wing foolishness and worse, then public attitudes toward it would be very different.

120. Brad, you wrote “I would think that surrounding yourself with only people who will confirm your prejudices and outright ignoring information that would lead one to doubt one’s conclusion is a form of lying.”

     Well, no. Salon was lying. Bush did not surround himself with yes-men. Bush was always willing to listen to people with varying points of view. But Salon disapproved of Bush’s decisions (and values) and therefore had to invent the dual lies that he surrounded himself with yes-men and that he was a puppet of evil forces.

     (And re the comments about Texas, yes, the liberal/coastal hostility to Texas is real and virulent. Funny how our oh-so-tolerant and multi-culti liberals are virulently prejudiced against all sorts of good people.)

121. Sorry, Brad. I’m still waiting for those Bush “lies” that you promised. Direct quotes from W himself, either from a reliable print source, or a link to an unaltered video/audio recording (abridged is ok, as long as there’s enough there to understand the context). Intel Community water cooler talk doesn’t make the cut.

     Whether or not Iraq abandoned the dollar as its currency of choice in oil transactions is irrelevant to W’s truthfulness regarding our reasons for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam. It was never stated as such, and thus is not a part of the public record, nor have any of Bush’s advisers, who would also have been in on the discussions, ever mentioned it (to my knowledge; please correct me if I’m wrong). Thus, we can speculate all we want over a few beers about Bush’s “real” reason(s) for invading Iraq, but we any reasoned judgment will have to depend on what’s in the public record.

     We know now in late 2010 that Afghanistan has rich deposits of rare earth elements. What did we know about this in 2001? Remember, we’ve had a variety of military, civilian government, NGO, and commercial types crawling over most of the country since the Taliban fell, and this probably included geologists. But at the time of the 2001 invasion, was this known, a matter of conjecture, or as yet undiscovered? It makes a difference.

     I personally believe that the “real” reasons W invaded Afghanistan and Iraq were the ones he stated publicly. And I also doubt that he gamed the intelligence system to give him what he wanted. Of course, I can’t prove that any more than you can in asserting that he did game the system, but I find your argument for how he did it unpersuasive, and far more conspiratorial than what Bush did in other areas of his presidency. I regard Bush, for all his flaws, and he has them, as one of our more transparent presidents when it came to matching his rhetoric to his actions. Hidden agendas were not his forte.

122. Have you all heard about the Rumsfeld book due out in January. It is to be accompanied by the online posting of previously unseen documents.

     http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704658204575610713834685650.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecond

     Get out the popcorn. This should be good.

123. If you abort the child, you will have no responsibility with raising her / him, or in how they turn out.

124. CalConservGirl,
     Wecome aboard. You will find many here who understand your situation. Dealing with liberal family members is the hardest.

     We constantly explore why liberals and conservatives have differing world views. No huge breakthroughs yet. But a great place to vent, explore one’s ideas, and commiserate with others.

     expat,
     I am so looking forward to Rumsfeld’s book. Rummy was just ahead of me in flight training and, though I’ve never met him in person, I know where he’s coming from. His pressers at DOD were great entertainment for me. Can’t imagine the book being any less so.

125. formerly

     If you can actually discuss why you have differing world views…you’re an amazing bunch.
     Problem is, for the most part, the reasons one has one view or another are frequently seen as ranging from vile to nefarious by denizens of the other.

     Hard to discuss that reasonably.

126. Brad’s link contains a variety of opinions, no facts. With his selective reading he ignores one worthy posted therein, regrettably named Looney. Dr. L makes this as his point #4:

     “The fate of the dollar and hence its use as an international reserve currency is largely in the hands of the United States–budget and trade deficits and low savings pose a greater threat to the use of the dollar as a reserve currency than any actions the EU or OPEC could undertake with regard to oil pricing.”

     I believe time has proved Dr. Looney correct, and Brad’s beliefs truly looney.

127. Well, I guess we are not going to get any Bush lies out of the commentor. Over the years I’ve asked other commentors making the same assertion on this blog to come up with a lie or two. So far no links to any lies. Hearsay and gossip presented as fact from anonymous sources and speculation liberally sprinkled with implication, that’s all I’ve ever gotten.

     On the question of Saddam and WMB, a couple of links for our commentor:

     http://tinyurl.com/2edtzfz

     The link above reports on 550 metric tons of yellowcake found hidden in Iraq. There’s really only one reason that Saddam(or any other despot) would purchase yellowcake. And the article tacitly admits that the yellowcake was probably bought from Niger, too, which points to the ridiculousness of the Plame/Wilson affair.

     The other link:

     http://tinyurl.com/2b58zu3

     One of Saddam’s nuclear scientists led the authorities to a nuclear centrifuge buried under a rose bush in his backyard. There were other items buried along with the centrifuge.

     A 2-foot-tall stack of related documents.

     A number of the most-difficult-to-make parts.

     Examples and templates which would be used to make a large number of centrifuges. A large number of centrifuges are needed to make nuclear weapons.

     Ubaydi said the elements represent a complete set of what would be needed to rebuild a centrifuge uranium enrichment program. He said he was told to bury it in his back yard until inspectors from the United Nations’ IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in Iraq before the Gulf War left.

     It seems that Saddam was simply waiting until the heat was off and then he was going to put together a nuclear arsenal, like the Iranians are doing now. Of course, there were many other reasons to depose Saddam other than the WMD, as other commentors have pointed out.

     At this point I guess I have to ask the commentor to explain why Saddam would have yellowcake, centrifuges, how-to manuals and various essential “parts” if not to nuke up.

128. There is that which appears to be rational that is not rational at all.

     …as I long ago (almost 20 years past) remarked to a friend: the difference between you and me is that I know when I’ve stepped through the church doors. But you sit there listening to the sermon and crying Amen! to the words of the preacher, and yet you’re totally unaware you’re sitting in the pews at all.

     Intelligence has NOTHING to do with this intransigence …with this blindness.

     And sadly, I have found you cannot effectively argue the basis of a system of *belief*, with those who are not rationally engaged with an objective examination of their reality, and are equally and blissfully unaware that they are emotionally invested in their belief system.

     This is the very basis of blind faith.

     And you simply cannot effectively use rational arguments with such believers.

     You see, you aren’t merely disagreeing with their politics, you are attacking the basis of their *faith*. And they react as “true believers” have reacted throughout history.

     …these are the ones “who know not that they know not”, and the same prescription applies today as when Omar Khayyam recorded it some eight centuries ago.

     That’s what all this has come to. That’s what the humanist educational system of the past 100 years has brought us to.

     …it has not turned out well, and it cannot turn out well.

129. to be fair, those who are interested in hardware are equally prejudiced against people “of letters”. Or of “urban areas”, in general. Or of art and design profession. Or of new-yorkers.

     No, Tatyana, I have to disagree with you here. Strongly. I’ve been among these folks, and I have NEVER heard the “hardware users” say the kinds of vicious things, much less in that venomous tone of voice, that the Lefties in the ad agency said.

     NEVER.

     Sure, there’s some amiable contempt. But not this vitriolic, hair-raising Hatred. The kind that would be happy to see the good-natured hardware users (you would no doubt be surprised to know how many of us have college degrees! yes ma’am, and even read BOOKS) herded into internment camps.

     They really rocked me back on my heels. The lid was ripped off, and I saw a snakepit alive and slithering with hate.

130. One more thing: re “negative attitudes towards New Yorkers”: I’m not dissing New Yorkers as such; after all, I live here because in most respects I love it.

     What I detest is the bigotry that I saw 9/10ths of my co-workers in that ad agency expressing when Sarah Palin made her national “debut.”

     And boy, was it nasty.

131. It is entirely conceivable that at some time in the future one or more of these demagogues will whip the mob up and either be unable to control it, or worse, having primed it, deliberately set it to explode in murderous violence.

     E.g., Al Sharpton and the Harlem riot; several innocents died in that one. Price he paid? Nothing.

132. Posted by the commentor: The American people were trusting that Bush was using the best intelligence sources available at the time and not trying to “stack the deck” in favor of a decision … that was already made. I don’t think he[Bush] met the burden of that expectation, and thus in my opinion he used a deliberately deceptive process to get what he wanted in the first place. … I tend to think he[Bush] deliberately sat things up to get what he wanted.

     The commentor believes that Bush, Cheney, and various other folks worked to “stack the deck” in regards to intelligence about Saddam and WMD. The British, French and German intelligence agencies also believed that Saddam was involved in a WMD program. Did Bush and Cheney stack those decks also?

133. So many new commenters !

     This is one of my favorite topics that Neo posts.

     It’s so baffling – yet I was a liberal.

     Why was I a liberal? Why did I hear an alternative point of view and do research and open my mind and then ultimately have a core belief change?

     Why can’t anybody else hear ALL the facts and make the same determinations?

     It’s so interesting because i live it.

     I live it with my loved one – just like Robin from Berkeley 🙂

     I live it with coworkers here in the belly of the beast in Sacramento, CA.

     I simply have to suffer most of the time – hearing vile and awful comments without being able to “engage” in pointing out logical, economic, factual arguments.

     It’s good to see that so many others suffer the same 🙂

134. What REALLY drives me nuts is seeing this state (CA) have a plurality of voters who just can’t see the hole they are digging !!!

     Billion dollar facilities are being built by Toyota, Intel, Google, Facebook, etc – but all in other states.

     Jobs?

     How about making an economic climate that is conducive of entrepreneurs investing in this state??

     The only jobs Jerry Brown talks about is – “green jobs”.

     Nobody who hires and produces green jobs will do it in CA unless they are “chosen”. In my book – picking winners and losers in the market place is the definition of fascism.

135. Green jobs. Ha!

     The following is copied from a comment from last May on PJ (it was so damn good, I filed it) ….

     Here’s a number you need to keep in mind: 3 Terawatts. That’s about how much power we’re using in the country right now. If that were used for 100W incandescent bulbs you’d need 30 billion bulbs. There’s no way renewable energy is going to come close to that. That would require over 2 billion square meters of 100% efficient solar panels, that’s about the same area as all the land in Rhode Island (real solar panels are about 25% efficient so you’d need to pave Delaware’s land as well). And of course solar panels don’t do too well at night, so you’d need to at least double that area, that brings us to the land area of Hawaii, plus you’d need a way to store around 40 TWh’s which simply doesn’t exist. And all that ignores factors such as clouds, dirt, animals, etc.

     So what about wind? The most powerful wind turbine today is ~7 MW, so we’d need around 500,000 of them. They have a rotor diameter of 126m, so they’d have to be at least 65m apart. That means they’d take up 6 billion square meters, about the same as all of Delaware. I can’t imagine it would be good for anything flying. Now this is the peak power, so we’d have to factor in all the time that the wind isn’t blowing hard enough, or when it’s blowing too hard. Again we need a storage system for mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, has anyone looked at the climatological effects of taking 3TW of convective energy out of the atmosphere?

     Both solar and wind suffer from a fatal flaw: They can’t be controlled. Grid operators can’t dial supply up (we can somewhat do down) to meet demand, and when you’re talking about the electric grid either you balance it or it balances itself…usually in some exciting manner.

     Hydro’s pretty much tapped out in the country, not to mention ecomentalists flip their shit whenever someone mentions building dams. Same thing with geothermal, unless we want to start drilling in Yellowstone.

     Nuclear could do it, but whenever you mention it the ecomentalists set a record in going from zero to stupid.

     That leaves fossil fuels. There’s nothing else. Especially when it comes to moving stuff. We have nothing that comes close to the power density of hydrocarbons when it comes to mobile applications, and hydrocarbons are the only energy source that’s suitable for mobile applications. Everything else (e.g. hydrogen and ethanol) are just ways to make electricity mobile.

136. Crap.

     Here: http://tinyurl.com/29ovp8a

137. Hello all – I just finished going through my blogroll, and as usual Robin Hanson had a pretty interesting post on a recent paper in the magazine “Science.”

     http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/collapse-was-slow.html#more-24883

     You can’t read the article unless you’re a subscriber, but Hanson provides some excerpts.

     Having these references is very good for (wink wink) debates with people of a certain political persuasion.

138. Baklava, I’m in CA too and have often wondered about how so many people can believe things that are so obviously (to me) silly and ultimately self destructive. Although I remember believing in things or ideas that I now consider silly and self destructive, which is what this thread touches on – why some people believe one way today and another tomorrow. Anyway

     I remember in college an anthropology prof made an interesting point about his experience in living among and studying native peoples.

     Living as a hunter gatherer requires a firm grasp of the reality you’re moving through in order to survive. Feedback is quick and final.

     He noticed that while people interacted and reacted efficiently within their environment with the animals and plants and each other, what struck him was that the explanations for why animals and plants did what they did when they did it were often fantastic and devoid of anything we would call science.

     For example, a hunter could predict with great accuracy the behavior of giraffes, elephants, or lions – their lives depended on it, but the explanations often involved the animals responding to the calls of the moon goddess or spirits or whatever.

     In that environment natural selective feedback ruthlessly culls out the behavior that doesn’t promote survival, but doesn’t impact the accuracy of the explanation. I am not saying that there’s a genetic hardwiring for specific explanations, but a likely one for the capacity to adopt and retain memes from ones peers, and if they promote survival within that group they will become pervasive, but not necessarily represent the true explanation.

     Any such hardwiring would be spread over natural variability – some more reactionary than others – and the open minded trait has its own survival advantage.

     In the modern world, nature’s feedback mechanism and the natural selective pressure aren’t gone just different. You can believe what you want about Global Warming (or Green energy, whether Bush lied about Iraq, or whether the Earth is flat or not), but the feedback for being wrong is not likely to impact how many kids you leave behind. You can also believe what you want about cars and trucks on the street, but if you can’t cross the street without getting hit, your genetic treasure won’t be getting passed on.

139. By far the best analysis of BDS is elizabethe’s, which states BDS is a programmed response, one that has a built in hate-urge.

     I believe the Guardian just recently ran a piece that stated people of faith and of less education are less susceptible to socialism. Why? Perhaps education isn’t education anymore: it’s “critical thinking” or “deconstructionism” or more appropriately programming.

     People of faith come equipped with structures resistant to programming. In essence, one has to deprogram the one to put in the other. People of faith are protected. But many others find their way out because of an inherent love of truth and goodness. Love for the good (perhaps of God) maybe, ironically, a subjective way to objectivity.

140. Otiose – for what it’s worth, I, like you and Baklava, am also in the Beholden State.

     But your points are excellent. Have you by chance ever read Bryan Caplan’s “The Myth of the Rational Voter”? I don’t agree with all of it – but Caplan is always interesting and provocative, and his thesis takes off from exactly the points you made, concluding ultimately from their implications that democracy necessarily fails (at least in the sense that it promotes economically suboptimal policies).

     People, in short, have preferences over beliefs, and what we believe is a function of feedbacks of various sorts (we want to be right, we want to be alive, and we want to be liked). In voting, the costs of ignorance are externalized onto others, so there is no negative feedback for ignorance and indulgence in feel-good nostrums. Hence, we do so.

     Thomas Sowell gives a similar argument for the delusions of intellectuals in his book “Intellectuals and Society,” and actually his analysis kind of cuts against Caplan’s (because Caplan believes that the data shows that better educated people tend to be better informed about economics, whereas Sowell pretty much says humbug to that).

     But they start from the same assumptions, and Caplan is a wild read due to his ruthless willingness to follow this line of thought to its logical conclusions. If you haven’t read it, you’ll have a blast doing so.

141. “…zero to stupid”

     That’s great, I gotta steal that one.

142. Davis, BR

     Excellent info on that “green” energy the “ecomentalists” (love that term) are cramming down our throats. If there were a viable energy option there would be a solution. This is still (barely) a capitalist country and there is a fortune to me made if there was a real option for “green” energy – especially when the government will guarantee your success. The good news is that AGW is going south and Al Gore’s billion plus Chicago Carbon Credit deal is done. I’m sure they were banking on Cap and Tax passing. That’s another thing about liberals – especiallly the eco-nuts – they hate people and love everything else alive. Their real agenda is to eradicate man on earth. Too bad they don’t start with themselves. We are facing (not here in So Cal) but in the northern hemisphere a very cold winter – again! If this continues the “green” police are really going to be on some thick ice. By the way, another great irony of the “progressives” is that they are such hypocrites. Al Bore is a “carbon footprint” abuser. In addition, look back at his tax returns when he was running for office – about $353.00 in charitable giving. Everyone I know gives away more than that every year and they are not millionaires. Same with the Obamas – middle of a recession and partying like its 1999. If Bush ever had a weenie roast they would put him on a spit. Yes, I know, he was always vacationing in that celebrity hot spot known as Crawford Texas. Those self indulgent, rich republicans. Funny they can’t keep up with the liberals in the ostentatious spending on self – even though they are the “party of the poor.” Right.

143. Beverly!

     Thank you so much for your post about working in the NY ad agency and how much they HATE Sarah Palin. Yes yes yes that is exactly the attitudes of the hip enlightened tolerant New York creative class. They are so horribly frightening. There is absolutely no talking to these people. They hate small town America and good looking patriotic women with every fiber of their being, it is completely disturbing how otherwise bright people can act like this.

     I have lost so many friends because of this attitude. Nothing dramatic, no big fight or anything like that, but I’ve found myself not calling them when maybe I would otherwise, but just kind of drifting away because I’m too wimpy to have an out and out battle with such dogmatic personality types. They hate the tea partiers so much they can’t see straight. It’s bizarre. They get so nasty. I have since left New York, hallelujah, although not because of the liberal climate, but because of the “it’s too expensive to live here climate.”

     Have unfortunately moved somewhere even more dogmatic-ly liberal than NYC if that’s possible. But it’s nice to be out of NY. Went to vote in my new city, couldn’t find the polling place, cause I just moved here, stopped in at the labor center government building in my neighborhood thinking they would know where the polling place was. they were phone banking for the DFL. They were really nice to me (thinking no doubt I was liberal because I “look” like one.) Gosh they couldn’t have been nicer, doing all of this research to find the polling place because they didn’t know where it was either. Such lovely people, however I knew I was in the belly of the beast and felt uncomfortable. They kept trying to get me to stay and phone bank with them. I felt rather guilty. It was an interesting experience.

144. “”People of faith come equipped with structures resistant to programming.””
     Curtis

     They don’t accept nor trust that man and his intellect are any sort of pinnacle authority. We see the gradation in intellect of say a mouse to a dog to human here on Earth. But given the unfathomable size of the universe, you’d have to don one hellacious set of blinders to not see how insignificant our abilities and knowledge undoubtedly are in the big scheme of things.

145. Uncle Fred says BDS is faith. BDS requires a true believer.

     Does all faith have to result in hatred? It very well might. Hate may be an unavoidable part of the human condition.

     Progressivism counterfeits itself as a science rather than a faith and demands that all hate is wrong. Yet it hates. It is a false science. Marxism did the same thing. Is anyone wrong to hate it? Could we call it evil? Is a faith that denies the existence of good and evil, evil? Judge a tree by its fruit.

     Hate, like love, is not intrinsically evil. Hate can be good. Hate is quite necessary. Hate, to be defined, is a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action.

     BDS hatred is an irrational hatred because the subject doing the hating never gave their consent. The correct path for a hatred to occur was bypassed and the subject was “tricked” into hating.

146. Julia NYC – you noted that the folks at the labor center (in the Twin Cities?) assumed you were liberal because you “look” like one.

     I get that a lot too. In fact, I would not be surprised if 100% of people who see me without knowing me assume (not unfairly, either) that my right leg is atrophied from my leaning so far left.

     Hmm… well, hold on, that makes it sound like I look like your average San Francisco washout. Don’t think hippie, think Park Slope hipster. I once had an argument with a friend of mine who claimed that despite everything, I was a hipster – I seriously resented it, because I loathe hipsters. Know what he said?

     “That’s EXACTLY why you are one.”

     Grrrrrrr.

147. Hey Curtis – g’day to you!

     I think your argument about the nature of hate is very plausible. Off the top of my head I agree with it.

     Let me, however, insert a caveat, if not exactly a counterargument. Whenever I have the sort of entirely reasonable thoughts you just presented about hatred, this little voice goes off in my head:

     “But what made the West unique was largely the incredible force of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Jesus taught us to love our enemies. He also came to ‘bring the sword.’ Whether or not one is a Christian, we in the West – though largely today confined to America – tend to exhibit this amazing ability to both fight tooth and nail against our enemies without hating them.”

     In other words, my wonder is how to combine rational hatred with loving one’s enemies. I’m not at all saying it’s impossible or that I have the answer, but here’s a preliminary attempt at one –

     When we speak of rational hatred – I like your definition: “a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action” – we must be careful to not only distinguish it from irrational hatred – lets just define it somewhat tautologically as hating that which is not hateful – but from what one might call “existential hatred.” This last could be defined by reference to the Nazis, Communists, and Islamists: It is a hatred that goes so far as to define its object as non-human. (NB – the French philosopher Chantal Delsol wrote a truly brilliant book on this matter, called “The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century”).

     Hence, my first attempt at resolving the dilemma is to say that hatred, if rational and non-existential, is actually not incompatible with Christian love of one’s enemies. How one defines “loving one’s enemies” is another question, but I’ll leave that to better minds.

     Just some food for thought.

148. There’s still another dilemma: The only way to escape hatred that is not existential is to appeal to a higher authority than experience., ie., God, Scripture. . . But this only worsens the problem because different Scriptures identify different targets. Therefore we are left with no objective basis for hating and it would seem that experience should become the common ground. Hasn’t history taught us something?

     There is a clue. There are a people who value life so highly that they risk their own lives to reduce collateral damage. One of them once said, “We can forgive you for killing our children. We can’t forgive you for making us kill yours.” These people, while trying to do everything they can for their survival and peace, are reviled, slandered, and murdered. This makes me think that the God of these people and their book is worth looking at. It’s where I see the best combination of existence and faith. (There are, of course, many others.) And the hatred directed against them, also happens to be, in duration and intensity, even a better example of irrational hatred than BDS.

149. What I find interesting is the more general opposition to Bush that we have seen since 2004.

     BDS is mostly in the left, but Bush’s popularity took major hits among moderates and conservatives as well.

     Conservatives were bothered by Bush’s stance on immigration, his support for Medicare Part D, etc.

     But what about moderates? Bush was in fact a center right president who goverened with bipartisan support in Congress for 8 years. His agenda matched the moderates and independents well. Why did they desert him? Does the MSM really have that much pull?

150. The whole Iraq thing drives me crazy. Before the war everybody in sight (Clintons, Kerry, Rockefeller etc) were citing dire warnings about Saddam and his WMD’s.

     Not to mention, Hillary and Biden both voted for war. If Bush was wrong, so were they. What are they doing now? And I don’t know of any credible argument that Bush lied to get them on board . . . I actually thought the Bush Administation had a rather weak argument with respect to WMDs back when the decision was made to go to war.

     Look at some of the other stuff the left was livid about when Bush was in office. Gitmo. Terrorists held without trial. Now they are silent on these issues.

151. You are missing something.
     Oil prices are denominated in dollars.

     I’m well aware of that, and of its implications, as indicated in my earlier response.

     Now whatever you might think about that school of economic /policy thought, it’s a fact we can’t stop the world if other big countries decide to go off the dollar. We might be able to prevent it in a bunch of smaller countries though, and in any case even delaying it might be a good thing for our country.

     Or not. Just a hypthesis I threw out there. I’m not wedded to it, I just wanted to know why you dismissed it so easily.

     Brad, I dismiss it out of hand because while it’s a good movie premise, it’s a stupid real-world hypothesis. First and foremost, the response is so wildly disproportionate to the stimulus. Going to war because one pissant country might price oil in another currency? That’s like going to war because they might get a better parking spot at the UN. After all, every country on earth besides the US has oil priced in a foreign currency, and they’re not that exercised about it.

     We have two competing hypotheses:

     1. Bush decided to gamble his nascent (as it then was) Presidency on the vicissitudes of war, mindless of the unhappy fates of other war Presidents (Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon) because an economic hypothesis (I laugh as I type that; I’ve already expressed my views on economics) that is obviously nonsense (since other countries live perfectly well with oil priced in a foreign currency) predicts potential inflation, or

     2. The whole notion is Red and/or pseudo-intellectual agitprop, a back construction that purports to explain events in a fashion that accrues to the speaker’s interests (either advancing collectivism and/or looking knowledgeable).

     Now, as between those two hypotheses, which seems more plausible?

     The very notion is laughable. Consonant with my nom de net, I plump for the simplest explanation: Bush, following the intelligence services of all Western countries, and in common with all Western leaders, without contemporary exception, did in fact believe that we might have a serious threat on our hands, and decided to do something about it before the threat, if any, could come to fruition.

     Seriously, does the petrodollar hypothesis really strike you as a plausible motivation for war? It’s akin to saying that if your neighbor decided to sell his house for less than the currently going rate he’d lower your property value, so you’d decide to murder him first. Ridiculous.

     “Rummy, I hear Iraq is thinking about going off the dollar!”

     “Damn, W, we can’t let that happen! If the economists at Long Term Capital Management — well, maybe that’s a bad example — are right, that’ll cause inflation! Heavens forfend!”

     “Damn straight, Rummy. Draw up war plans tout suite. It’s on now!”

     “I sure hope the hipsters don’t get wind of our cunning plan!”

     “Me too!”

     This stuff writes itself.

152. Don wrote, “but Bush’s popularity took major hits among moderates and conservatives as well. ”

     There were conservatives who seemed to display BDS – but mostly Bush’s popularity sank as a result of the ever increasing government (huge increases in the federal spending for education and prescription drugs).

     The growth in government during Bush is small as compared to Obama – but conservative MEANS something.

153. Seriously, does the petrodollar hypothesis really strike you as a plausible motivation for war?

     Heh.

     Note that in 2002, 60% of Senate Dems (including now SoS Clinton and VP Biden) voted for war. As did 40% of Dems in the House.

     Did Bush lie to get their votes? If so, why didn’t they special prosecute the hell out of the Bush Administration once they got their chance in 2007 and 2008? Was Pelosi protecting Bush, perhaps?

     What I like to do is look at decision points over time. The 2002 decision to go to war. The decision to do the Surge, or oppose it (in some cases well after it had proven a success). The decision to copy the Surge. The decision to select a VP and a SoS who were, apparently, wrong when they voted for war in 2002 and who were clearly wrong when they opposed the Surge. Etc.

154. There were conservatives who seemed to display BDS – but mostly Bush’s popularity sank as a result of the ever increasing government (huge increases in the federal spending for education and prescription drugs).

     The growth in government during Bush is small as compared to Obama – but conservative MEANS something.
     

     Actually, spending was going down under Bush until the FY 2008 Democrat budget.

     I understand conservative opposition to Medicare Part D, Ted Kennedy’s education bill, etc. I oppose those things as well. But I can also see the things he did right.

155. Conservatives disagreed with Bush on a number of things. They think he’s not conservative, but a big-government republican. Some thought he was insufficiently aggressive in the WOT. He was weak on immigration.
     But they didn’t hate him with the spittle-spewing, visceral hate of BDS.
     And they didn’t lie about him.

156. IMO, much of the enmity directed towards Palin and W is because of their fearlessness in admitting to being Christians.
     The readings at church yesterday said this exact thing…”All will hate you because of Me”.It has always been so.

157. Don:

     What I like to do is look at decision points over time. The 2002 decision to go to war. The decision to do the Surge, or oppose it (in some cases well after it had proven a success). The decision to copy the Surge. The decision to select a VP and a SoS who were, apparently, wrong when they voted for war in 2002 and who were clearly wrong when they opposed the Surge. Etc.

     Not to mention a POTUS who, when a US Senator, introduced legislation which would have kneecapped the Surge by having combat troops out of Iraq by March 2008.

158. Thanks, kolnai. I’ll check out Caplan’s book.

     Sowell’s I’ve read.

159. And not just any type of Christian, S.Graham, but the type of Christian who believes God erupted into history and that His law and purpose will prevail and that God, not man, will bring ultimate justice and peace. The liberals instantly recognize such a belief as destructive to their authority and agendas: abortion, welfare, defense . . . They save their best venom for them; but anyone who opposes them, even based upon fact-based rational and historical studies, are excoriated. What Palin and W represent is a move towards a combination of the two.

160. Kolnai: And Hooks. That really sounds interesting.

161. Seriously, does the petrodollar hypothesis really strike you as a plausible motivation for war?

     No…

     But currency devaluation would be…

     We owe many countries lots of money. Obama and team cant devalue the currency we are holding as they are doing, and not devalue the currency that the Chinese are holding.

     By the end of the hyperinflation of Wiemar, a house Frau could pay off the national debt with a few bills, given that the contracts are in the same named currency.

     China did not invest, nor did Russia, and others invest for the purpose of getting script back. (of course a lot of it is their games too).

     At some point someone is going to demand raw materials at some previously set point, or assets, or something… and so the direction the president and team takes us in can lead to critical issues because the only good way out is an industrious one, not a command economy one, which would put the debt even further out of reach of being paid.

     Of course it wont start that way, it will start with currency games, then holding trade in certain commodities (hoarding, or selling to others what they used or intended to sell here).

     a lot of other states have spent quite a bit of time bringing crap over the border to their friendlies.

     will it get that far? who the heck knows? which really shouldn’t be a question on the table at all.

     it may end up being a domino of one south American place, then another, and voila a big mess thanks to a bunch of recent treaties (our news kind of stopped reporting that like they used to).

     take a look at Nicaragua / Costa Rica Border BS
     (not to mention Mexico)

162. Curtis,Thank you for your response.I agree.

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164. Kolnai:

     Glad to hear you are a Park Slope hipster which is better than San Fran hippie washout hipster. Yes hipsters are loathsome. I cannot bear Park Slope, have unfortunately ended up in another Park Slope-like area, and that’s all I’m sayin! Am saving my pennies and can’t wait to move to the burbs! No lie! Yes, you sound like the rarest of creatures, the conservative Park Slope hipster. Which is a rare rare thing. So rare that no one has ever seen one, and known that that’s what they are seeing.

     Yes the conservative hipster. Did you know Mo Tucker, drummer from the Velvet Underground, the mother of all hipsters, is a tea party member! yup it’s true. And also so was Joey Ramone or maybe it was Dee Dee. One of those two was a unabashed MAJOR conservative republican. Velvet Underground and The Ramones. Hmmm. Pretty darn hipster. They are the mother ship. They are also so cool that they are (or were in the Ramones case) not quiet about it either (their conservatism). Something to strive for in my case.

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