However, having said that I will add that had I been intending to vote for him, his disgraceful, anti-Constitutional (no, not "un," but "anti," meaning "opposed to"), craven flip-flop on FISA would have changed my mind. That to me is a deal-breaker. Yes, I think it's that important.
Okay, onward. Over at the Mahatma X Files the other day, James asked "Wherefore the 'progressive' blogosphere after November?" He wondered about the possibility of supposedly progressive bloggers turning into lefty versions of Powerline - that is, unquestioning supporters of the administration - should Barack Obama win the presidency.
In comments, I noted that I'd had the same concern for some time. When I had been tagged a year ago to suggest worthwhile blogs, I said one reason for my choices was that
I'm confident that my judgments about their worth will not have to change after January 2009 ... and "Whew! We have a Democrat as a president!" as now seems reasonably likely will not instantly change them from attack dogs into lap dogs, as I'm sure will happen with a number of more or less progressive blogs we could all name.In my comment to James, I went on to argue that
the shift from harping on to hagiography is already visible in the response to criticisms of Obama's recent attempts to carefully wriggle away from the suggestion that he has ever said anything vaguely progressive.And oh, yes, he has wriggled and squirmed, trying to shift to the right or to find a way to declare his right wing bona fides while denying he's moving at all. He's done it on abortion, on the death penalty, on NAFTA, on Iran, on separation of church and state, on Social Security, and of course most notoriously on FISA.
(I'm indebted to TalkingPointsMemo and Stephen Suh at Cogitamus for several of the above links.)
He even tried to do it on Iraq: He didn't really change his position, but he shifted the emphasis. In the primaries, it was "We will withdraw over about 16 months (in consultation with the military)." But on Thursday he presented it as "I will consult with the military (to plan for withdrawal)." That is, the focus shifted from the withdrawal to the consultation with the generals. That was an immediate loser and he quickly backed off, declaring himself "puzzled" by the reaction.
The thing is, the lefty blogs have been chock-a-block with justifications and "explanations" - that is, not to put too fine a point on it, lame excuses - for all of this which invariably revolve around the argument that none of this matters, it's just that it's the general election now, not the primaries, and these shifts are either necessary (according to some) or a brilliant campaign strategy (according to others). Besides, they say, how someone campaigns has little to do with how they will govern - in other words, pay no attention to what he's saying now, which makes me wonder why the "moderates" and rightists he's supposedly trying to appeal to should do so. The important thing is to get Obama elected, so shut up!
For an increasing number, it's not even "get Obama elected," it's "beat McCain." The convention hasn't even happened yet and already the Obama supporters are falling back into "god forbid the other guy should win" arguments.
Among the worst of these lick-Obama's-picture sychophants was a poster at TalkingPointsMemo who noisily declared that Obama is being "pragmatic" (defined as "seeing things as they really are") while those who criticize him are "ideological" (defined as "standing on principle ... in order to make a grand point or gesture"), which was linked both to "illogical" (by means of a patently inadequate online thesaurus which didn't know the word "ideological") and to "idealistic" (defined as "not compatible with reality").
In other words, if you are highly idealistic in your politics, your views are most likely not compatible with reality. Synonyms include: "quixotic, romantic, starry-eyed, unrealistic."The twisting of words was so complete that according to this writer, George Bush is "highly idealistic."
Thus,
[p]eople who complain that ... they will no longer support Obama because he voted for or against something that, earlier, he had voted against or for, are highly idealistic--make that--illogical....And believe it or not this all has to do, somehow, with Ralph Nader.
The bottom line is that if you just shut up and support Obama no matter what he says or how he shifts around or changes his stances, no matter how the yes, idealism he consciously strove to symbolize before is dumped on the trash pile now, then you are "pragmatic" and mature and wise. But if you say "Obama is not to be the person I thought he was and I can't accept these new positions," if you change your opinion of him because he has changed his stand on things you care about, you're guilty of "Naderism" and are out of touch with reality.
Yeah, I'd call that very much like a lefty Powerline blogger.
But all that is really just the backdrop for what I actually wanted to talk about, a backdrop of an increasingly-fuzzy Barack Obama turning to his right while on his left sits an adoring throng who claim clarity in the blur, much like those who see the face of Jesus in a potato chip. What really prompted this was another Obama declaration.
A week ago, Obama made a major speech
forcefully defend[ing] his patriotism ... against anyone who would challenge it, declaring he wouldn't stand for persistent rumors questioning his loyalty and aimed at sinking his presidential campaign.The understanding of patriotism, it needs to be said, is a very personal thing. And Obama is certainly free to express his own conception of it and his rejection of those who would question it. I certainly have tried to state my own notion of patriotism recently, in one case by trying to lay out some of my fundamental beliefs and in the other by addressing it more directly:
In addition to embracing the comment I read some years ago that "it is natural to have an abiding affection for the land of one's birth," I say being a US patriot means being dedicated to the ideals on which the country was supposed to have been founded and which, at its best moments, it strives to uphold to as full a measure as possible: Ideals such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as the right to rebellion against oppression, as "promot[ing] the general welfare," as political freedoms, as representative government "of, by, and for the people" - the ideal of, to sum up in a single phrase, an intent to "establish justice," a justice I say must include the economic and the social as well as the political if it is to have real meaning. ...So if Obama wants to say "this is what patriotism means to me," he can go for it. What he is not free to do - and what he did in that speech - is to use that discussion as a political weapon to define others out of the term, to use it as a means to engage in the craven "oh no no no, I'm not with them" so typical of Democraps by condemning those to his left and praising those to his right while making it clear that his pledge to never question the patriotism of others in the campaign applies to those directly in the campaign but not the rest of us.
[I]f patriotism can be understood as embracing the ideals of our nation, as striving to hold this country to the highest of those ideals instead of the lowest of its prejudices, as committing to a notion of what the US, of what we as a people, can be and have at times approached being, then I submit that I am as patriotic as they come.
Well, that's not quite right. Some of the rest of us are safe: After covering his ass by praising John McCain's time in the military and essentially declaring that record to be beyond criticism (even though McCain is arguably a war criminal who has given conflicting accounts of his treatment after he was shot down on his 23rd bombing raid over Vietnam), Obama added
[w]e must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period.So soldiers, veterans, you're safe. You're patriots. No questions allowed.
But for some others, their own understandings of patriotism, of the duties of a free people vis-à-vis their government, do not get the same consideration. Consider this passage from the speech:
[W]hat is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s - in arguments that go back forty years or more. ... [S]ome of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.This is such a panoply of ignorance, distortion, insult, and falsehood that it would probably take another forty years to disentangle it.
Most Americans never bought into these simplistic world-views.... Most Americans understood ... that there is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America's traditions and institutions. ... All too often our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments - a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when ... a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.
Glenn Greenwald was appropriately angered, charging that Obama had "defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the 'the so-called counter-culture' of the Sixties" and did it in terms that echoed Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 speech to the GOPper national convention, where those who objected to policies were called "the blame America first crowd."
But take careful note of the fact that - and this made me especially angry - Obama not only slammed the '60s and MoveOn.org, he went out of his way to do so. He went out of his way to defame, out of his way to attack. If you read the speech you'll see that this whole passage could easily have been dropped without damage to his argument. This was no "historical context" argument, it was a calculated attempt to declare "I'm no hippie!" by engaging in ritual denunciation of an entire era. That is doubtless part of the reason the Greenwald went on to say that the speech exemplified the "narrative which the media propagated and Democratic institutions embraced," which includes the notion that "the truly pernicious elements are on the 'Far Left', whose values must be rejected, while the Far Right is entitled to profound respect and accommodation."
The blunt fact is, Obama impugned the patriotism of millions among us, the patriotism of those who symbolized and still symbolize the politics of an entire generation, a generation born in civil rights marches and schooled in Vietnam, a generation whose activism was forged in idealism and honed on its deep shock and dismay that the America they grew up hearing about, the America in which they believed, was not the America they saw before them every day, a generation even whose excesses were driven by the conviction that what they saw was wrong and that it did not have to be that way.
A generation who answered "Love It or Leave It" with "Change It or Lose It." A generation whose attitude, I have said before, could best be summed up in the freedom-affirming phrase "Question Authority." A generation that, as again I have said before,
over a several-year span was powerful enough to end the draft, limit and finally stop a war, force one (and maybe two) Presidents from office, shake the foundations of a society’s judgments about half its population, force the nuclear power industry to a virtual halt, and change - perhaps not by much but quite possibly permanently - that society’s sense of its relationship to the environment.A generation that, as I wrote to a friend some years ago, lived with
the sense that you could make a difference, that your dreams could be lived out, that they really could come true. For all the sexism we came to acknowledge in the counterculture and the peace movement, people were trying to live more egalitarian lives. For all the undercurrents of racism we dug out of white activist’s relations with black groups, people were trying to work it out and live more justly. For all the awareness of our umbilical cord connections to the consumer society, people were trying to live more simply, with greater ecological awareness. There was a sense that you could make it better both in yourself and in others by both your social example and your political actions.That was the "simplistic world-view" and "cynical disregard" of the "so-called counter-culture of the Sixties" of which you spoke, Senator Obama.
Well, I say to you, Senator Obama, that were it not for that "simplistic world-view" and "cynical disregard," you would not be where you are today. I say to you, Senator Obama, that "change we can believe in" is not driven by the right, it's not driven by "centrists" or moderates or "reasonable" people, it's driven by very unreasonable people, people who are sufficiently "out of touch with reality" to refuse to accept what passes for "realism" - recall that another '60s slogan was "Be realistic: Demand the impossible." I say to you, Senator Obama, that whatever good this denigration of others' convictions may do for your own personal ambitions, if you really believe in the sort of (moderately) progressive policies that during the primaries you lead your supporters to believe that you do, then slicing away your friends and supporters will not help you toward that goal.
And I say to you, Senator Obama, that just as you say you will not stand by while others question your patriotism, I am damn sure I will not stand by while you question mine.
Some Footnotes:
One: There are some fundamental misstatements in the passage from Obama's speech which I quoted. Two stand out. The first is that it shows a profound ignorance of the '60s to dump all oppositional politics into a single box labeled "counterculture." While there was a fair amount of overlap with more traditionally political movements, the counterculture was more about, as should be known from the name, the culture. That is, it was more about day-to-day social and economic relations than elections, demonstrations, and the like. In fact, more politically-oriented activists often accused counterculture folk of just wanting to opt out of "the struggle."
That's not overly important, it's just the infuriatingly routine ignorance found among those who rely on media images and David Broder types to define the period for them. The other is more serious; it's the claim that antiwar activists "failed to honor the veterans" of Vietnam. That is bullshit. It was the antiwar movement (usually in cooperation with Vietnam vets), not the American Legion, not the VFW, not the bloodlust war hawks, who established the coffeehouses, the counseling centers, the job centers. It was the antiwar movement, not the American Legion, not the VFW, who condemned the VA for refusing to consider PTSD a real condition. Indeed, for several years the Legion and the VFW weren't interested in reaching out to or even dealing with the "pot-smoking" Vietnam vets "who lost a war for the first time in US history." Buying into the concocted rightwing meme that "the antiwar movement hated the troops" has had a real political cost over the years and it is a disgrace to see Obama embracing it.
Well, actually there's a third, the idea that Gen. David Petraeus was merely "providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq." But that's just too easy a target.
Two: I was amused reading that Obama said
I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"and et cetera. I'm surprised in this day of semantic nit-picking that no one has mentioned that those are not the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, they are the first lines of the second paragraph. Or is it that the pundits and politicians, like, it appears, Obama, just don't know?
Three: The best single line in the whole speech, as far as I'm concerned, was this:
The young soldier who first spoke about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib - he is a patriot.Indeed he is. His name - it would have been nice had Obama made the minimal effort to find out - is Sergeant (now former Sergeant) Joseph M. Darby. In return for his honesty he was vilified and threatened in his home town to the point where the military wouldn't let him go back there because of concerns for his safety. He and his wife were moved to an undisclosed military base and he was protected by armed bodyguards for six months. In a 2006 interview with 60 Minutes, he indicated he still
doesn't want to share what he does now, where he lives or talk about his family.Despite that, when asked during that same interview if he had it to do over would he do it again,
Darby says, "Yes. They broke the law and they had to be punished."Had to be punished, he said earlier, because he knew that no matter the reason for the abuse, it was wrong. Just wrong.
"And it's that simple?" [Anderson] Cooper asks.
"It's that simple," he replies.
Yes, by any truly rational definition of the word he is a patriot.
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