Obama's Not-War On ISIS

"What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it."

—GWF Hegel

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages (edited by me)

I've already addressed the Obama Administration's Totally-Not-War-Or-Anything-Like-That against ISIS a couple times before, but it's particularly pertinent to do so now, once again. President Obama has requested from Congress another Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), or what we might refer to as a declaration of we're-still-not-calling-it-war. Obama conducted an entire offensive in Libya without congressional approval, and our "counterterrorism" against ISIS has now been ongoing for six months without any such approval—so why is that the president now feels it's appropriate to ask for a new AUMF?

The answer is not exactly a comforting one. It's clear that Obama isn't admitting wrongdoing, as he's continued to maintain his current not-war is authorized by the 2001 AUMF. He could just be offering Congress the chance to have its voice heard just to be polite, but that seems a tad dubious. So what possibility is left? In a word, escalation.

As we know well by this point, Obama has given us his guarantee that there will be no "boots on the ground." This hasn't proven to be very meaningful so far (unless the over-2,500 security personnel and military advisers in Iraq are wearing sneakers, maybe), and the proposed AUMF doesn't do much to strengthen it. We have a vague promise that there will be no "enduring offensive ground combat operations," which is essentially meaningless when one takes into account that (by pure coincidence, of course) the president is the one with the authority to decide what "enduring" and "offensive" mean (and presumably what "ground" means, too, given that the boots worn by US military personnel in Iraq are apparently not on it).

Of course, as I've previously noted, even if Obama does maintain his "no combat troops" pledge, that doesn't mean the next president will—and, conveniently enough, the sunset provision on the AUMF would be in 2018, well after Obama's successor is in office; whether that's a Republican or Hillary Clinton, we have some reason to be worried.

As Noam Chomsky, among others, has noted, it's US involvement in the Middle East that's helped to create the scourge that is ISIS—the idea of a war (erm, I mean "counterterrorism offensive") to rectify that problem is, of course, completely nonsensical. As if to remind us the dangers of US involvement in the Middle East, the government of Yemen was recently overtaken by a coup. The culprits are the Shia Houthi, who have been alienated by the policies of Yemen's US-backed government (both before and after the 2011 revolution). The Sunni community within the country, feeling threatened by the Shia insurgency, has increasingly turned to al-Qaeda (you know, that group that we thought was the worst thing ever, before ISIS came into being).

Even if we were to devote the resources (i.e. lives and money) necessary to defeat ISIS, there's no reason to think that that wouldn't have the effect of creating some other horrible terror group, just as our war to get rid of Saddam Hussein ended up creating this nightmare. There's no pretty solution for the ISIS problem, but greater US involvement is no solution at all. If you live in the US, now would be a good time to call your representative and urge them to vote "no" on the AUMF that's been proposed. Before you write this off as pointless, keep in mind that it succeeded back in 2013, when Congress was scared away from approving Obama's plan for airstrikes on Syria.

The new war (whether we call it that or not) is not going to be to the benefit of the general populace of the US, Europe, Iraq, or Syria. It's hard to imagine ISIS can be defeated in any way but through war, but it's not our war to fight and we are not helping anyone by getting involved in it. Even if the fearmongering about ISIS were anything but blatant lies, this would be exactly the wrong thing to do in the course of addressing the problem. If Congress approves the AUMF as it's been proposed, it perpetuates the same policies that have created the current situation.

How Political Incorrectness Was Stolen

I've always detested political correctness. Even before I was old enough to actually understand politics, it always came off to me as a stupid set of rules written by people who thought that no one should ever have to be offended, and that even innocuous speech and behaviors should be deemed "offensive." My impression of it over the years has hardly improved; it’s always seemed like—and still seems like—an excuse to get outraged over stupid things, act victimized, and prevent any sort of enlightened discussion on serious issues from actually taking place, often while promoting shallow, empty catchphrases that are more problematic than helpful.

George Carlin (Image from Reuters)

Ever since I discovered them, I’ve been a fan of George Carlin’s numerous takedowns of the hypocrisy and frivolity of the PC movement; it’s in that vein of anti-PC thought that I’ve always fallen. Historically, I consider myself to have pretty good company: Carlin, Marilyn Manson, who’s always been just as ready to offend PC liberals as he has the Christian right, and Hunter S. Thompson, who always represented the spirit of political incorrectness in his very existence. The stated goals of political correctness—moving toward a society where we tolerate our differences with one another and no one is unfairly discriminated against or made to feel inferior—were always ones I supported, but the victim mentality of the PC movement, their constant and usually unjustified outrage, their readiness to glorify people who say and do things that have reason to be offensive, just not to their side—those were always enough to turn me off.

But it’s because of my disgust for that sort of shallowness and hypocrisy that a disheartening truth has become clear to me, after a barrage of events to back it up—the uncritical deification of the dead Charlie Hebdo journalists, Salman Rushdie’s vindictive attacks against those who criticize “our fallen comrades,” Bill Maher’s claim that liberals are “bullying” him, and then, of course, Jonathan Chait’s empty-headed bad joke of an article; there is a new breed of political correctness: Political Incorrectness. People like Maher, who I once thought of as almost an heir to Carlin’s anti-PC individualist legacy, have revealed themselves to be no more eager to have a rational discussion, no less willing to play the victim, and just as ready to exploit good ideas as an excuse for loathsome garbage, than the PC crusaders they so despise.

Political correctness, to this new movement, is a convenient accusation to lob at anyone who challenges their mendacity—take when, back in May of 2013, Maher had Glenn Greenwald on his show, and after Greenwald threw a mountain of facts at him rebutting his claims about Islam, Maher eschewed rational argumentation in favor of accusing him of holding “a silly, liberal view that all religions are alike, because it makes [Greenwald] feel good [to think so].” Similarly, when, last year, Brandeis University decided not to grant Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree because of her statements on Islam (such as that the West should fight a war against it using military force and that it’s a “nihilistic cult of death” that it “legitimates murder”), Sam Harris immediately responded by deeming the university’s act a capitulation to “PC-bullying.”

Harris also wrote off criticism of his support for ethnic profiling as being largely motivated by political correctness, and lacking substantive critique; Rushdie, too, has claimed that because of the “intimidation” of political correctness, we are unable to address the major problems associated with the War on Terror (presumably, he’s not referring to the very true, but largely unmentioned, fact that the United States, being the world’s leading terrorist nation, has no business waging a “War on Terror”). Like Jonathan Chait in his recent article, Harris, Rushdie, Maher, and the rest of the “Political Incorrectness” movement readily write off whatever arguments or actions contradict their “Politically Incorrect” views as being motivated by PC standards, regardless of who’s behind them and the rationale that’s offered for them.

As can be seen from these quotes, though, it’s not enough for the champions of “Political Incorrectness” to just dismiss criticism of their views as PC bullshit; rather, it’s crucial that political correctness of almost any incarnation is now a type of “bullying” or “intimidation” (or fascism, depending on who you’re talking to). One of the most annoying traits of the PC movement (particularly among self-proclaimed feminists on sites like Tumblr), for me, has always been the victim mentality underlying it, so it’s particularly disappointing to see these proponents of “Political Incorrectness” succumbing to the same self-indulgent nonsense. The downright whininess of the “Politically Incorrect” is, at times, farcical, such as when Sam Harris complained to Cenk Uygur about (perish the thought!) being called a “douchebag” in an article on Salon (we can only hope poor Sam has gotten the help he needed in recovering from that degree of PC bullying). The “Politically Incorrect” crew throws around accusations of bullying, authoritarianism, and censorship almost as readily as online “Social Justice Warriors” throw out accusations of racism and misogyny. What makes this particularly ironic, of course, is the standard line from the “Politically Incorrect” that what they really want is an open discussion and that their opponents should “just stop being so sensitive!”

Even worse, though, is that the “Politically Incorrect” crowd is really not that great when it comes to “politically correct” issues like the LGBT cause, religious tolerance, women’s equality, and so forth. Not long ago, Bill Maher cited how “Facebook has now decided we have to choose, in our profile, from 56 different genders” (which, if he’d checked, he would know are largely just slightly different terms for the same things, and are really just various prompts you’ll get if you select the “custom” option and begin typing, rather than some long list you have to scroll through) as an example of liberals being “obnoxious;” in a stand-up routine, he went on to mockingly list options like intersex, bigender, and genderfluid (apparently Bill Maher is unaware of the various societies throughout history—all, no doubt, ruled by PC fascists—that have recognized more than two genders). And, even taking into account that he’s a comedian, it’s a bit hard not to detect misogyny in some of his routines, as he talks about the "feminization" of society, where sensitivity matters more than facts.

Harris is worse; his ideas about “conversational intolerance” are completely incompatible with the view of a society where no one is made to feel unwelcome based on personal creed (as long as that creed tolerates others and harms no one). His advocacy for “benign dictatorship” being imposed on Muslim countries by the West as a means of transitioning to democracy shows an undeniable belief in an almost inherent superiority of Westerners, to the extent that even a Western-imposed dictator is better than a Middle Eastern Muslim democracy (until, of course, we can properly civilize the Muslims).

Then, of course, we have the late Christopher Hitchens—not a just a saint for the New Atheists, but for many of the “Politically Incorrect” as well (no surprise, given the overlap). With him we run into a gold mine of awful views, from his support of the Iraq War to his view that Native Americans really should get over the whole “genocide” deal because it was one of those unfortunate things that happens in the process of advancing as a species. Hitchens said and did the sort of things that even some of today’s conservatives would back away from.

With Manson, Carlin, or Thompson, while you might not exactly get that “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” feeling, there's always the sense of a sort of “you don’t screw with me and mine, I won’t screw with you” attitude—that as long as someone else isn’t hurting anyone, there’s no reason to bother them. The Manson-Carlin-Thompson dream society is an essentially libertarian one—not libertarian in the Ron Paul free market sense of the word, but rather a society where people are free to be who they are, and aren’t under the thumb of big business, big government, religious institutions, or the thought police. In the end, they're on the side of the “little guy,” whoever it is, in the present or the past, that's getting unfairly kicked around (or worse) based on race, class, or personal creed. The same, I’m afraid, just can’t be said for the Mahers, Harrises, and Hitchenses of the world.

In the end, though, there really is a defining feature of “Political Incorrectness” that makes it vastly worse than the PC values and attitudes it’s supposed to save us from: it consistently, with few exceptions, ends up defending the worst aspects of Western foreign policy. This stands in stark contrast to the old-school political incorrectness I’ve mentioned. Between Carlin’s scathing quips about how the US likes to bomb brown people, Thompson’s unequivocal condemnation of George W. Bush for “killing brown skinned children in the name of Jesus and the American people,” and Manson’s comparison of America’s role in the Iraq War to a large-scale version of the Columbine shooting, it’s very clear where each of them falls on the foreign policy debate: with those who hold the Noam Chomsky-esque view that American foreign policy is largely murder on a massive scale. And why not? Isn’t the idea that when the government disintegrates innocents halfway across the world, it’s somehow more noble than any other instance of murder, just an example of a particularly awful sort of political correctness? Isn’t calling out the crimes of the government we live under challenging the standard on what it’s “acceptable” to say in perhaps the most important way possible?

But, unsurprisingly, the “Politically Incorrect” see it differently; this is obvious enough with Harris or Hitchens, given their readiness to use whatever force necessary to eliminate the Islamic extremism they claim is the real threat to civilization; given his unfettered praise of Obama, one can’t expect anything too impressive from Chait on the foreign policy front, either. Steven Pinker, another “Politically Incorrect” “intellectual,” asserts that democracies like the US “tend to stay out of disputes across the board,” disregarding all examples to the contrary and asserting there has been a “Long Peace” since World War II. Maher is probably the best in this respect, given his opposition to the Iraq War and that he even went as far as to compare the drone war to terrorism—but, as illustrated in his scuffle with Glenn Greenwald, that doesn’t keep from ultimately defending the idea that we Westerners are far more civilized than Those People (i.e. Muslims).

For all the stupidity of political correctness, it is at least on the right side of this issue; while the PC warriors may be obnoxious, one rarely finds them defending Western foreign policy or trying to stick up for the human rights record of the US or UK. The PC left is not only annoying, but certainly also hypocritical at times. But issues like these are trifles compared to the monstrous crimes that have occurred as part of US foreign policy, and which the “Politically Incorrect” would often like to gloss over or even defend. By giving cover to that sort of barbarism, “Political Incorrectness” earns itself the scorn and disgust of anyone concerned with human rights. It’s this issue, ultimately, that’s prompted me to focus so much on figures like Maher and Harris recently.

Anti-PC individualism, as espoused by Carlin, Thompson, Manson, and numerous others, has been buried by people claiming to represent it but using it as a façade to promote a completely different set of ideas. We need someone who condemns the stupidities of the PC movement on the one hand—a movement that really has gained a disquieting amount of influence—but who stands just as strongly against the violence of Western foreign policy and the lies than enable it from people like Harris and Hitchens. I don’t know who might fill that role, but whoever it is, now would be a great time for them to step into the spotlight.

[Later note: Originally, I cited California's affirmative consent law as an example of political correctness leading to a bad policy. However, I have since reevaluated my position and consider my former views on the law to have been based on a poor understanding of it, and I have concluded that, while there may be some concerns in how it's enforced, the law is fundamentally sound.]

Not a Very Accurate Thing to Say: A Response to Jonathan Chait

There's an article by the journalist Jonathan Chait that's gaining a decent bit of attention lately, entitled "Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say." It's already gotten a fair bit of criticism (not all of which I agree with), but I thought I'd throw in my two cents on it anyway. To be honest, upon first seeing it, I thought it might be something I'd end up agreeing with—I'm no fan of political correctness, and I think it's one of the most annoying tendencies within the modern left. However, it became clear after not too long that this article was not some well-thought-out critique of political correctness so much as an attack on viewpoints Chait doesn't like by strawman and by associating them with legitimate stupidity which isn't directly related to them in any meaningful fashion. Per the usual, I'll pick the article apart here.

The article starts out decently enough, talking about a recent incident where a student journalist was harassed and fired because of a piece he published satirizing PC culture, and an incident in 1992 when a group of angry radical feminists stole a videotape from another feminist who had an exhibition documenting the lives of sex workers who viewed their profession as empowering. Correctly, Chait views both of these incidents as PC stupidity run amok. However, it's shortly after this that Chait begins to reveal how this article is ultimately his own stupidity run amok, as he claims that the "theory animating both attacks turns out to be a durable one, with deep roots in the political left."

Next, Chait complains about the criticism of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons:

On Twitter, “Je Suis Charlie,” a slogan heralding free speech, was briefly one of the most popular news hashtags in history. But soon came the reactions (“Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie”) from those on the left accusing the newspaper of racism and those on the right identifying the cartoons as hate speech. Many media companies, including the New York Times, have declined to publish the cartoons the terrorists deemed offensive, a stance that has attracted strident criticism from some readers. These sudden, dramatic expressions of anguish against insensitivity and oversensitivity come at a moment when large segments of American culture have convulsed into censoriousness.

This is something I'm happy Chait gave the opportunity to address—while I've already attacked the New Atheist response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, I haven't very much discussed the actual cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo. The truth is, not only do you not have to be a supporter of political correctness to condemn them; if you honestly see nothing wrong with some of the cartoons, I wonder if there's not something wrong with you. How about this one, making light of peaceful protestors killed by the Egyptian government (the text reads, "The Qur'an is shit—it doesn't stop bullets")? Yeah, hilarious. There's an entire letter that's now surfaced, written (before the shooting) by Olivier Cyran, who once worked at Charlie Hebdo, attacking their increasing obsession with mocking and degrading Muslims. The magazine quotes Bernard Maris (a journalist that was killed in the attack) as writing:

Show your breasts, Amina [a member of FEMEN who posed topless], show your genitals to all those bearded retards who hang around on porno sites, to all the desert pigs who preach morality at home and pay for escorts in foreign palaces, and dream of seeing you stoned to death after raping you... Your nude body is of an absolute purity, compared to their jellabas and repugnant niqabs.

Nothing Islamophobic about that. (Oh, I forgot, I'm not supposed to criticize him because he was killed. Whoops.)

Chait's next examples of political correctness gone awry are not much better; he cites the petition to revoke the invitation to Bill Maher to give UC Berkeley's commencement speech (an issue I've already addressed), glibly noting that Bill Maher has criticized Islam "along with nearly all the other major world religions." The fact that Bill Maher has explicitly singled out Islam and that his criticisms of it are particularly problematic is conveniently overlooked (though, as I said before, I don't support the petition).

Similarly, "protesters at Smith College demanded the cancellation of a commencement address by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, blaming the organization for 'imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.'" So the protestors didn't want the commencement speech given by the managing director of an organization that routinely exploits and harms third-world countries, who herself champions the disastrous European austerity measures? Can't imagine why, seems like a great pick to me.

In the same vein,

Rutgers protesters scared away Condoleezza Rice; others at Brandeis blocked Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s-rights champion who is also a staunch critic of Islam; and those at Haverford successfully protested ­former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who was disqualified by an episode in which the school’s police used force against Occupy protesters.

What's shocking is not that these figures were "blocked" by protestors but that the universities would even consider them as commencement speakers: Rice avidly backed the US invasion of Iraq, a major war crime; Hirsi Ali said that the West needs to fight a war against Islam, using military force if necessary; Birgeneau sided with police who brutalized nonviolent protestors on his campus. Are we honestly supposed to feel bad that they were scared off?

Chait then goes on to cite a number of other examples of what he views as PC craziness, which I mostly agree are genuinely stupid. In fact, I agreed so substantially that I wasn't sure that the article would actually be worth responding to—that is, until, it got to the latter bit of it. There, the things he says begin to become so absurd that it's quite a task to demonstrate how wrong they are—the best way is to simply look at them bit by bit.

The right wing in the United States is unusually strong compared with other industrialized democracies, and it has spent two generations turning liberal into a feared buzzword with radical connotations. This long propaganda campaign has implanted the misperception — not only among conservatives but even many liberals — that liberals and “the left” stand for the same things.

This part is actually true, and I find it quite annoying for reasons very unlike Chait's. I find it very annoying that my ideology is constantly grouped in with those whose views I strongly dislike (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, etc.)  as "leftism." Likewise, I find it incredibly annoying that the right wing actually believes liberal hacks like these are "left-wing" in any sense; and I find it equally irritating that it's popular among some mainstream Democrats to fancy themselves as somehow being far-left just because they hate Republicans.

It is true that liberals and leftists both want to make society more economically and socially egalitarian. But liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace. (So, for that matter, do most conservatives.)

Uh-huh. Let's look at the three claims this paragraph makes, in effect: Claim A: "liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights..." If by liberals you mean mainstream liberals like Chait, this could hardly be less true. Chait is yet another Obama apologist, willing to overlook or endorse minor issues pertaining to individual rights under the president such as his expanded drone strikes (so much for the right to a fair trial), expanded NSA spying (so much for the fourth amendment), and role in keeping a Yemeni journalist in prison on bogus charges (and there goes freedom of the press). This sort of thing is all too typical of mainstream liberals, who often continue to hail the greatness of Obama in spite of his blatantly problematic (to put it politely) legacy.

Claim B: "most conservatives" also "hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition." Even more absurd, considering that Obama's worst policies have often been too mild for many conservatives. American conservatism is largely American liberalism minus the few shreds of humanity that that ideology has. To say it defends individual rights or holds to Enlightenment values is laughable.

There's also an implicit third claim: leftists don't "hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace." I guess someone should tell that to Noam Chomsky, one of the most renowned leftists on Earth, who has consistently defended individual rights, freedom of expression, and a "free political marketplace" (whatever that means) from attacks on them by liberals and conservatives, and who cites Enlightenment principles as the core of his anarchist philosophy.

It gets better next:

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.

This overlooks the minor fact that Marx wrote an entire work defending freedom of the press and attacking censorship and that prominent Marxists throughout history, such as Rosa Luxemburg, have defended "freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly...the free battle of opinions." It's a bit telling that Chait neither quotes nor cites anything to back up his claim. Why complicate an idiotically contrived narrative with actual facts, though?

The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones. “The liberal view,” wrote MacKinnon 30 years ago, “is that abstract categories — like speech or equality — define systems. Every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere. Strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of Blacks.” She deemed this nonsensical: “It equates substantive powerlessness with substantive power and calls treating these the same, ‘equality.’ ”

The idea that strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of blacks is, in fact, nonsensical. Of course, if you genuinely believe in free speech, you have to support it for even abhorrent groups like the Klan; but it's odd that Chait should choose this view from MacKinnon to illustrate the "problems" with the far left. Furthermore, what right does MacKinnon have to represent the far left? By no means is every radical leftist a radical feminist, like MacKinnon--in fact, while many of the radical feminists I know of hold far-left viewpoints, not that many of the radical leftists I know of are radical feminists.

Skipping ahead a bit, we get this paragraph:

Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism (the far right still commands far more power in American life), the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed.

I have a longstanding distaste for political correctness, but the idea that the "p.c. left" is more "philosophically threatening" than conservatism (or the psychotic ideology that we refer to today in the United States when we use that word) is unfathomably stupid. Let's have a brief refresher of the "accomplishments" of Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of American conservatism:

• support for the South African apartheid regime, whose military aggression killed 1.5 million people in neighboring countries
• support for IMF "structural adjustment programs" which led to the deaths of an estimated 6 million children under five per year
• funding of South American terrorists who reportedly raped, murdered, and tortured civilians
• weakening of unions and the middle class at home in the United States 
• policies that helped pave the way for the surveillance state we have today

And the movement that venerates this man as some kind of American hero is supposedly embracing a less damaging philosophy than the "p.c. left" because the latter tend be whiny and oversensitive. A bit of a stretch.
 
Chait then launches into a discussion of a professor of feminist studies who encountered young pro-life activists and, after they refused to take down their sign, "snatched the sign, took it back to her office to destroy it, and shoved one of the [protestors] on the way." Supposedly this event and the fact that there were people who defended it is some damning indication of the evils of the far left and the danger of political correctness. While the incident and the defense of it are deplorable, somehow the fact that there are people in the US government who still defend the illegal invasion and occupation of a country that posed no threat to us seems a tad more pressing.

Chait goes on to discuss how the PC movement of the 1990's was vanquished because, thankfully, Bill Clinton came along to rescue us from it and return us to the world of genuine, good liberalism instead of politically correct leftism. Yes, thank God that Bill Clinton could save us from political correctness. True, he did end up bombing a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan and killing maybe tens of thousands for no decent reason, but isn't that a minor issue compared to the menace of political correctness?

After a couple paragraphs vacillating between whether political correctness will or won't be vanquished again in the near future, Chait wraps up with this:

That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph.

Yes, nevermind the small fact that social freedoms for blacks, Jews, gays, and women were advocated for by far-leftists well before American liberalism did anything to address their situation. In Chait's mind, apparently, you have to abide by what he considers American liberalism (singing the praises of Clinton and Obama, essentially) or you must be a member of the "p.c. left." So Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and Gore Vidal are apparently either nonexistent, members of the "p.c. left" (despite holding ideas not even vaguely resembling the ones Chait describes), or actually mainstream liberals (despite detesting the ideology Chait espouses).

Ultimately, this is either Chait's attempt to smear leftism in order to deflect its criticism of mainstream liberalism, or Chait is really just too ignorant to know the complete stupidity of his claims about leftism. Neither says anything good about him as a journalist. But, in spite of his mendacious claims about their ideology, major far-left figures both today and throughout history would eagerly defend his right to publish this article. That fact, of course, defeats his arguments far more effectively than any kind of censorship ever could.

Note: The claim that the structural adjustment programs led to the deaths of six million children under five per year was slightly reworded for greater accuracy and the hyperlink was directed to a more reliable source. I also qualified the claim about Clinton's bombing killing tens of thousands as the number is unknown.

Understanding New Atheism

Having already addressed the factually challenged attacks on Islam from the clergy and laity of the Church of New Atheism, it seems an appropriate time to examine in greater depth the dogma of that sacred institution. Like any good cult, it provides its members with a conveniently prepackaged set of beliefs that they need not take the time to think too critically about; in fact, the less they do so, the better. Let us take a look, then, the doctrines of the Church, starting with its most fundamental.

The Church of New Atheism’s golden rule, the core of its dogma, is that "religion" is the supreme evil to be exterminated; I put religion in quotes because it essentially means whatever the New Atheist wants it to at any given moment (usually Islam or, to a lesser extent, Christianity). The creation of religion is the original sin in the New Atheist scripture, and mankind has suffered throughout history because of this sin. The only way forward is for religion to be eradicated. The New Atheist Sacred Cause is the fight against religion, a fight that trumps all others in its importance.

That this is held as a sacred principle should be evident from both what those from the Church do and say; the Reverend Sam Harris has said that, given the choice to eliminate religion or rape, he would "not hesitate" to choose religion. Archbishop Richard Dawkins has said that he considers faith as "one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate." The deceased, ever-venerated Saint Christopher Hitchens went so far as to praise Lenin and Trotsky's forcible, murderous "secularization" of Russia, not even acknowledging the obvious inhumanity of the religious persecution that accomplished it.

Furthermore, the Church of New Atheism really must view religion as some kind of almost transcendent evil for it to unite its members as it does; Saint Christopher, for instance, eagerly supported the Iraq War, but even the New Atheists who opposed it (and, accordingly, must see it as the cause of perhaps hundreds of thousands of unneeded civilians deaths) still see him as a holy figure. The New Atheists have substantial differences on political issues, but are all capable of agreeing that religion is so intolerable that not only is it worth it to join arms with those whose views are otherwise horrific, but that those who fight in the name of the Sacred Cause are admirable, almost regardless of whatever else they may do.

The idea of religion as the supreme evil is held, like Holy Truths tend to be, on pure faith; there is no evidence to show that the greatest threat to the world today is religion, and the New Atheists are by and large intelligent enough to understand this if they were so inclined to try. Even if one were to hold that religion truly is the most damaging force today, is it really so much more damaging than the evils of nationalism, militarism, corporatism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia that those topics are far less important than religion? That's hard to imagine, and yet you find Archbishop Dawkins and Reverend Harris devoting a tiny fraction of their attention to subjects like that in comparison with their borderline obsession with the Sacred Cause. Even for those New Atheists who do address such topics, Saint Christopher and Reverend Harris are nonetheless held up as righteous men, despite the fact that they have only contributed to those problems.

As evidenced by Archbishop Dawkins's statement about faith, it is not just religious institutions, but religious belief that is an evil; while the New Atheists often present their objection to religious belief as being that it is irrational or harmful, their relative silence on other widespread irrational or harmful beliefs (nationalism, faith in existing societal institutions such as the government, militarism, etc.) renders these claims implausible. Religion—at least if it's Islam or Christianity—is fundamentally evil. In an instance of amazing intellectual acrobatics, both the Archbishop and Reverend Harris have accused religious moderates of helping to "make the world safe" (the Archbishop’s phrase) for religious extremists, because by being kind and tolerant, they make religious faith seem innocuous or even as if it has something good to offer; for this idea to be coherent, we must assume that religious extremists have correctly interpreted their faiths (an idea which the Church of New Atheism’s members will often eagerly agree with) and moderate Christians and Muslims are not "really" Christian or Muslim. Any more complex interpretation of these religions is, under New Atheist dogma, the propaganda of politically correct apologists for religion, who are, of course, a particularly despicable brand of infidel.

The comparison of religious faith to a mental disorder is also exceedingly common within the Church, from its deacon Bill Maher explicitly referring to religious belief as a "neurological disorder" to Reverend Harris stating that the doctrines of many religious traditions are "suggestive of mental illness" to Archbishop Dawkins naming his book (a New Atheist Sacred Text) The God Delusion. Not only does this hark back to the charming history of any "irrational" or "dangerous" belief being deemed a mental illness and being "treated" accordingly, it once again ignores the prevalence of often-absurdly irrational beliefs among the general populace. Rather than an analysis of the conditions that have allowed religious belief to persist, the Church would rather consider its survival an "accident of history," to use the Reverend’s phrase. Religious belief is to be degraded, not analyzed.

Religious institutions at their worst are not the result of relatively universal human flaws such as greed, ambition, and the like, but rather the inevitable result of religious faith. Whatever good that religious institutions do, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the religion they claim to represent, but rather is representative of relatively universal human virtues, such as generosity, empathy, and compassion. The absurdity of this double standard is, of course, obvious to those who haven't drunk the Church's Kool-Aid, but to the New Atheists it is apparently an entirely reasonable way to view history. Religion is to blame for everything bad committed in its name, but earns credit for nothing good done in its name.

Of course, the blanket statements against "religion" do not keep the New Atheists from singling out the worst religions, which is reasonable enough. Their methodology is where it gets interesting; a religion's fundamental badness is determined by how damaging its extremism is, as long as the damage is obvious to Westerners, as a general rule of thumb. Islam, whose extremism and theocracy we're constantly reminded of, is naturally the worst religion; Christianity is usually the runner-up, which is unsurprising given the prominence of Christian fundamentalism in Western society, particularly the United States. Nonetheless, Christianity is often a fairly distant second, as the ways in which its extremists have caused the most damage—the Iraq War, for instance—are not exceedingly obvious to many Westerners. Religions like Buddhism are often considered relatively benign, in spite of the widespread Buddhist violence in Myanmar against the Muslim minority; as this is not something many Westerners are readily aware of, it merits little consideration.

I've already noted the New Atheist dogma that extremists are the only religious people who interpret their religion correctly, so naturally the Church sees a religion's extremism, insofar as it is visible to Westerners, as indicative of the principles embodied by that religion's sacred texts. As Sister Jaclyn Glenn tells us, "if [Islam] were peaceful then extremists...would simply be extremely peaceful." To state the obvious, this is yet another rule that only applies to religion, according to New Atheist dogma; were it applied to other ideologies, almost every ideology imaginable would be deemed violent, given that extremists representing virtually any ideology you can name have committed violence in the name of their ideology. And, again, it goes without saying that "extremists" includes only those extremists who cause damage readily visible to Westerners.

Because of these rules, the West is widely viewed among New Atheists as representing the very concept of civilization; the West is less religious than the Middle East, and the damage caused by religious extremists in the West tends to damage those outside of the West, in ways that are far less visible and obvious to the average Westerner. Thus, by New Atheist logic, the West is superior to the Middle East, QED. The innumerable crimes against humanity committed by Western governments (particularly the US government) are either conveniently overlooked when discussing "Western values" or, by the bolder members of the Church, justified as somehow attempting to fight against jihadism or Islamic fundamentalism. (Reverend Harris is a good example of a New Atheist in the latter category, given his argument that the Iraq War was an instance of "civilized human beings...attempting, at considerable cost to themselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people.")

The New Atheists like to present their Church’s innovation as being its willingness to aggressively take on religion in ways it hasn't been challenged in the past, but this is yet another bit of fraud on their part. Thinkers like Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Friedrich Nietzsche have all been willing to criticize religion, and in spite of what the New Atheists may believe, their twisted, baffling ideology bears little resemblance to the ideas of these men. For the Church of New Atheism and its believers, religion is not simply the result of the ignorance and superstition of the masses, a means of subjugating and controlling the people, a means of escapism for the oppressed, or a way for the weak to enslave the strong, as for the aforementioned philosophers; rather, it is some kind of virus which has mysteriously spread and must be wiped out. It is not part of a larger problem, it is the problem, towering above all others and independent of them. This leads, predictably, to statements like the Reverend’s about eliminating religion, with no comprehension of the fact that if religion were eliminated in the world we live in today, ideologies probably just as bad, if not worse, would quickly spring up to replace it and take over the role it serves as the opium of the masses and the tool for controlling the people.

Of course, being a church, the Church of New Atheism can’t have just a force for evil it battles against—a devil—it also must have a deity to worship, or it wouldn’t be a church at all. It finds its deity in Science; not science as a tool, as a means to an end, but Science as an end itself, as the end, the sacred end, the divinely ordained end, forever and ever, amen. New Atheist dogma includes not just a belief in the usefulness and reliability of science, but rather, a faith in Science as such—scientism, as it is known. Science is, from the New Atheist viewpoint, not simply able to debunk religious superstition, but locked, by its very nature, in a struggle against religion—and, for the good of humanity, Science must win this struggle, and dethrone and replace religion.

Science is, under New Atheist dogma, the diametric opposite of religion—accordingly, whereas religion can only do wrong, Science can only do good. Whereas religion is blamed for all evil actions done in its name and given credit for no good actions done in its name, the opposite is true with science; modern medicine, technology, and the other things that have contributed to human well-being are, of course, here by the grace of Science, and you can count on New Atheists to remind you of what Science has done for the world whenever the opportunity arises; mysteriously, nuclear weapons, environmental pollutants, and increased capability of government surveillance, while undoubtedly enabled by science, don’t seem to enter into the conversation.

Likewise, Science is represented in the Church’s teachings by the Newtons, Einsteins, and Darwins of history, who, the New Atheists say represent what science really is; the Tuskegee scientists and the Nazi scientists who experimented on humans, of course, do not represent science, but rather their evil deeds reflect only on their own personalities; science was merely an excuse. This stands of course in stark contrast to the attitude toward religion, which is exactly the opposite.

Boldest of all is the idea on the part of many New Atheists that Science can even replace religion in determining what our values ought to be; and I refer not even to the soft sciences when I say “Science,” but to the most empirical, objective branches of science. Per the usual, Reverend Harris is the prime example of this principle taken to its extreme, as he claims to be able to scientifically determine the “correct” morality, which is every bit as frivolous as it sounds. This bit of insanity is not limited to the Reverend, though, as Archbishop Dawkins has also dabbled in the field of a “scientific” morality, declaring that anyone with a Down syndrome-afflicted fetus is morally obligated to abort it. One can only imagine the veritable Utopia that would be created under the principles of these men, where whether one should live or die ultimately comes down to what is “scientifically” the most ethical.

To be clear, I don’t intend to draw false equivalencies between religion and science; science is always the rational way to understand how the world works and to gain useful knowledge, and I do not believe religion is necessary to have a set of values; indeed, I wish more people would personally choose their own values rather than blindly accepting those given to them by whatever house of worship they attend. But the Church of New Atheism offers us not an analysis of the dangers and irrationalities of religion or the useful benefits of science, but rather blind vilification of the former and songs of praise to the latter (on occasion literally, as Sister Glenn can testify).

To those unfamiliar with the Church and its doctrines, it must seem amazing that anyone but utter fools could believe in such idiocies, and the New Atheists are not fools. As with any church, the members of the Church of New Atheism believe in such doctrines because of their own psychology; many likely have likely been drawn to it due to their own irreligion and the pervasive influence of religion in society around them. When one feels like an outcast, joining a cult can be easy. But, ultimately, one can hardly imagine that when John Lennon asked us to “Imagine…no religion,” and even when Marx and Engels looked forward to a world where religion was a thing of the past, that they had in mind the demonization of other people’s religious beliefs. The Church of New Atheism, like many a church before it, set out with the goal of uniting mankind under its belief system—but, as usual, the divisions have only been made starker.

An Open Letter to the New Atheist Movement

To the New Atheist Community and their Allies,

The "Four Horsemen" of
New Atheism (Image from
 Wikimedia Commons)

You know, we really should be able to get along. You don't want religion informing public policy? I don't either. You think religious fundamentalists are a bunch of ignorant cretins? So do I. You think we should believe what scientists say over what a book written thousands of years ago says? Me, too. You think atheists are treated unfairly in our society? We're one hundred percent on the same page. But then you have to go and do something to ruin it, and, well, you've done it again.

I can barely believe the ignorant statements I've heard from some voices in your community about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. I've actually heard it said by popular YouTubers that are part of your movement that Islam did the attacks, as if it's some magical entity that possessed the actual perpetrators of the crime and removed any critical thinking skills they had. You do know that Muslims all over the world have condemned the attack, right? Even Hamas condemned the attack. If you want to argue that a lot of Muslims who speak out against terrorism still hold very restrictive, reactionary views on how society should be run, I can't disagree with that. But have your members honestly gotten so lazy that they're going to ignore the numerous Muslims and Muslim organizations that have condemned the Charlie Hebdo attack just to try to make Islam look bad? You're not being bold by doing that. You're not defying politically correct ideas. You're just succumbing to intellectual laziness of the worst stripe.

Now, there were some pleasant surprises I got, such as when Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie actually acknowledged just how widely Muslims have condemned the attack, and Maher even went on to argue against the idea that Islam is unique in how it's used to justify violence, citing Israeli settlers as an example of Jewish extremists (the first time I've heard him say anything negative about Israel or any Israelis). But even so, a lot of members of the New Atheist community just have to tell you that, when it gets down to it, Islam really is a uniquely bad religion. After all, look at the polls of Muslims! Look at the laws in Muslim countries! Because, of course, socioeconomic conditions and the fact that many majority-Muslim countries have in the past suffered through Western bullying and interventionism couldn't conceivably have anything to do with increased religious extremism in those areas.

Do you really think that the United States would be as free a country as it is today if the Ottoman Empire had deposed our president and replaced him with a dictator they supported? Do you really think that Christian extremism just as virulent as the Muslim extremism in Iran (where the equivalent of that situation did, indeed, happen) couldn't have sprung up? Are you just unaware of the fact that majority-Christian countries with similar histories of colonialism and imperialism and similarly poor economic conditions are often just as oppressive and unenlightened as their Muslim counterparts (Uganda, anyone)?

Better than that, though, is when you try to say the actual doctrines of Islam endorse terrorism and religious persecution. Inevitably, you end up citing verses from the Qur'an that supposedly endorse killing infidels, often mistranslating words from the original text (for instance "Fitnah," which means persecution, not disbelief, as I've seen claimed a number of times) and removing all context in order to construe them to mean something totally removed from what actual scholars interpret them as meaning. Clearly, though, anyone who points out your intellectual bankruptcy on these points is just some dumb PC liberal.

Oh, and best of all is the "draw Muhammad" bullshit. Yes, because gratuitously mocking the figure held sacred by one of the most despised groups in the Western world is making such a brave, bold statement. I'd love to hear your explanation as to just how insulting Muslims, including those who oppose terrorism and theocracy and support secular democracy, is somehow being heroic. Here's a fun idea: why don't we draw insulting pictures of Christopher Hitchens? I have this vague memory of some of you being angry that people were saying he would burn in hell after he died of cancer. Did it seem like society had no respect for you or your beliefs and was spitting on someone you admire? Gee, I wonder how Muslims feel about you treating them the same way. Oh wait, they're wrong, so it just doesn't matter. I forgot that rule about how if people believe something irrational, it's fine to try to make them feel marginalized and alienated. Because I'm sure none of you believe anything that others might see as irrational.

It truly, really amazes me that people as intelligent as many of your members can be so idiotic as to think tactics like that will somehow make things better. Are you just blissfully unaware of the fact that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda thrive by driving a wedge between Muslims and the "Western world" (and that that may have been a motivation for the Charlie Hebdo attack)? You want to make this conflict between those that think Islam is stupid and dangerous and those that kill in its name, but how can any Muslim take your side when you've defined it as the anti-Islam side? On the other hand, if you would let this conflict be about what it really should be about--those that support individual freedom even for people and views they despise versus those who will kill anyone that doesn't abide by their rules--you could get plenty of Muslims on your side. Right now, we should be talking about how encouraging it is that so many Muslims, even those you would least expect it from, have condemned the attack in Paris, and how this is a sign that just because a person's Muslim doesn't mean they can't be on "our side." Instead, you've drudged up the same tired, ill-founded attacks on Islam that you love to drudge up given any opportunity.

I'd also just like to note your community's total hypocrisy as supposed opponents of religious extremism. I've barely heard a word from many of your prominent members about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, in spite of the numerous deaths caused by offensives such as last summer's and the fact that Israeli right-wingers routinely cite a God-given right to the land of Israel. Sheldon Adelson, the number one donor to conservative super PACs, said a few months ago that it doesn't matter if Israel is a democratic state because the Torah never endorses democracy. Where was the New Atheist outrage then? How can you expect people to believe you don't harbor some kind of bigotry against Muslims when you use attacks by Muslim extremists to justify disparaging Islam and yet when Jewish extremists support and abet killing far more people, you barely acknowledge it, or even defend them?

In fact, by your crude logic, Judaism should be the religion we're really concerned with; Jews are a mere 0.2% of the world's population, and yet Jewish extremists routinely use their religion to justify and support the oppression and military occupation of the land of millions of people, and the murders of thousands. But, of course, anyone who acknowledges that must just be an antisemite.

I'd like to be abundantly clear on one point: my problem with you has nothing to do with political correctness or the idea that what you say and do is "offensive" or racist. It's that, at least on the issue of Islam, you're intellectually lazy and deliberately disregard anything and everything that could create a more complex picture than the one you want to paint. I don't insist on the idea that all religions are equal, as Bill Maher has accused opponents of his view of pretending. It's that your claims about Islam are ill-founded, and your view on how we should respond to Islamic extremism is counterproductive.

There are plenty of people within the New Atheist community that I agree with on many issues, to be sure. I agree with Bill Maher the vast majority of the time and I enjoy his commentary; I watch videos from The Amazing Atheist, a popular YouTube atheist and a supporter of New Atheism, and I almost always agree with the points he makes (including on feminism, which he's often unfairly criticized for). But these frequently intelligent, insightful voices suddenly start saying things that are at best oversimplifications and at worst completely unfounded when it comes to the issue of Islam. Of course, there are plenty of valid aspects of Islam to criticize, and there are plenty of rules and ideas in the Qur'an that really are antiquated and damaging to modern society; I'm not saying you're not allowed to hold a negative view of Islam, but having a negative view of the religion doesn't justify deliberately alienating and insulting anyone who believes it and making claims about it that really just don't hold up to scrutiny. And if the New Atheist community can't come to terms with that, maybe the New Atheist community's doctrines have a problem worth discussing.

Your Erstwhile Ally,
H.S. Buchanan

LATER NOTE:
 My criticism of the New Atheist movement made here absolutely stands; however, in the last paragraph I said some things that no longer hold true, not because they are too harsh to the New Atheist movement, but because they were not harsh enough. As I've noted now, I no longer enjoy Bill Maher's commentary, and in retrospect I believe he has been saying tasteless and prejudiced things for a long time; perhaps I realized this on some level before, but refused to let myself fully acknowledge it.

As for The Amazing Atheist, my views on him, too, have shifted significantly, and looking back there are many things he's said that I find problematic, including his take on feminism, which I defended at the time. I opted not to change what I'd already written because it would be easier to simply explain the situation and let what I had previously written stay on the record. However, my views have shifted significantly enough that I wanted it to be clear that I no longer stand by my defenses of Bill Maher or The Amazing Atheist, lest anyone stumble on this blog post and get the wrong impression.

EVEN LATER NOTE:
I have removed a reference to The Amazing Atheist as the "number one YouTube atheist" because I have been unable to verify this claim.

Everything is Not Awesome

It's always fun when you find an article so delusional that even its title gives it away as crazed, fantastical ramblings. As soon as I saw that there was an article called "Everything is Awesome!" I had a feeling I knew what I was in for, but I think even then I underestimated just how ludicrous the article would be. I actually had to verify that it wasn't satire--but it's not. Its author, Michael Grunwald, is a serious journalist, whose brilliance is illustrated by his statements that he doesn't care that a US citizen was killed by a drone strike and that he can't wait to defend the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange (in fairness, he admitted that one was dumb). So, sadly, this is all too serious.

The article came out just before Christmas, so my response is coming a bit late, but everything the article discusses is still relevant, and I've heard the same arguments in more places than just this one article. Anyway, here's how it begins:

Good news! The U.S. economy grew at a rollicking 5 percent rate in the third quarter. Oh, and it added 320,000 jobs in November, the best of its unprecedented 57 straight months of private-sector employment growth. Just in time for Christmas, the Dow just hit an all-time high and the uninsured rate is approaching an all-time low. Consumer confidence is soaring, inflation is low, gas prices are plunging, and the budget deficit is shrinking.

Obviously, a lot is being covered here already, so let's pick it apart a bit. The economy is growing, yes, fine. Certainly better for it to be growing than stagnating, so that's all fine and good. However, the fact the Dow is up is not really good news for all of us; it's good for those who have stocks, which means mostly it's good news for the rich. It doesn't do so much for the working class family struggling to pay their bills. The reduced uninsured rate is, again, a good thing (though it largely just means we're finally approaching every other industrialized country in one area we've lagged greatly behind in); consumer confidence is good for the GDP, but it does little to fix the fact that our economy remains excessively reliant on consumer spending. The low gas prices are nice (and helpful for people lower down on the economic ladder), but let's not lose sight of the fact that ideally we should be moving away from being so reliant on gasoline to begin with. As for inflation and the deficit, neither of those have been real problems in the United States the past few years; actually, a bit of inflation would be good, as it would help middle and working class Americans pay back their debts. A larger deficit would be perfectly acceptable, too, depending on what it's spent on. So, already, the picture's quite a bit more complex than Grunwald would have us believe.

You no longer hear much about the Ebola crisis that dominated the headlines in the fall, much less the border crisis that dominated the headlines over the summer.

This is just asinine. There was never an Ebola crisis in the United States, and the problem is still very real in the countries where there is an actual outbreak. The border crisis was another bit of fear-mongering as well; the actual cause of it--violence and poverty in Latin America--has certainly not magically disappeared in the course of six months. 

Crime, abortion, teen pregnancy and oil imports are also way down, while renewable power is way up and the American auto industry is booming again.

Great, except that the biggest threats to the country have little to do with crime, abortion, or teen pregnancy. The bit about oil imports and renewable energy is a bit more relevant, but seeing as potentially devastating environmental issues remain a very real threat, it might be a bit early to start celebrating.

You don’t have to give credit to President Barack Obama for “America’s resurgence,” as he has started calling it, but there’s overwhelming evidence the resurgence is real.

Why? Because we finally have an economy that's growing and we've started taking some basic measures we should have a long time ago? Call me crazy, but that doesn't exactly seem to outweigh the negatives of increasing inequality, a government controlled by corporate interests, militarization of our police forces nationwide, and the erosion of our civil liberties.

The Chicken Littles who predicted a double-dip recession, runaway interest rates, Zimbabwe-style inflation, a Greece-style debt crisis, skyrocketing energy prices, health insurance “death spirals” and other horrors have been reliably wrong.

And? For the most part, no one with any real credibility predicted these things. This is equivalent to saying we're in good shape because the alien invasion your mentally unstable uncle predicted hasn't happened. Most of these were never real threats to begin with, so the fact that they haven't happened means very little. 

Come to think of it, the 62 percent of Americans who described the economy as “poor” in a CNN poll a week before the Republican landslide in the midterm elections were also wrong. I guess that sounds elitist. Second-guessing the wisdom of the public may be the last bastion of political correctness; if ordinary people don’t feel good about the economy, then the recovery isn’t supposed to be real. But aren’t the 11 million Americans who have landed new jobs since 2010 and the 10 million Americans who have gotten health insurance since 2013 ordinary Americans? It’s true that wage growth has remained slow, but the overall economic trends don’t jibe with the public’s lousy mood.

Wage growth being slow is not some minor issue; without wage growth, a growing economy doesn't mean all that much for large numbers of Americans. And wage growth isn't a little slow or something along those lines; it's practically nonexistent. A higher GDP doesn't mean much if most Americans won't see the benefits of it, but apparently that's a minor detail in Michael Grunwald's mind.

Six years ago, the economy was contracting at an 8 percent annual rate and shedding 800,000 jobs a month. Those were Great Depression-type numbers. The government was pouring billions of dollars into busted banks, and experts like MIT’s Simon Johnson were predicting that the bailouts would cost taxpayers as much as $2 trillion. In reality, the bailouts not only quelled the worst financial panic since the Depression, they made money for taxpayers.

They made fifteen billion dollars, which is tiny when you consider the size of the bailouts, and that came at the expense of keeping the banks huge and unaccountable for their actions. So I guess if you're happy with a total lack of accountability in the financial sector and an economy that continues to work for a small elite, all for the government to collect a whopping fifty dollars for every man, woman, and child in America, the bailouts were just awesome, to use Grunwald's favorite word. 

This bah-humbug brand of moral superiority has flourished since the crisis: How dare you celebrate this or that piece of economic data when so many Americans are still hurting? It’s awkward to argue with that view, since many Americans are indeed still hurting. But the economic data keep showing that fewer Americans are hurting every month. No one is satisfied with 5.8 percent unemployment, but it’s way better than the 10 percent we had in 2010 or the 11 percent Europe has today. Declining child poverty and household debt and personal bankruptcies are also worth celebrating. Better is better than worse. Whether or not you think Obamacare had anything to do with the slowdown in medical cost growth, it’s a good thing that Medicare’s finances have improved dramatically, extending the solvency of its trust fund by an estimated 13 years. It’s a good thing that U.S. wind power has tripled and solar power has increased tenfold in five years. And while it’s true that the meteoric rise of the stock market since 2009 has produced windfalls for Wall Street, it has also replenished state pension funds and 401(k) retirement plans and labor union coffers. It definitely beats the alternative.

So, apparently, the only choice is between the current situation or a worse one.  Yes, it would be worse if the things Grunwald mentioned were getting worse instead of better, but isn't it just a tad selective to only look at what's getting better and ignore what's getting worse? You wouldn't celebrate the fact that your Hot Pocket is a delicious golden brown if your house was burned down in the process of making it.

Let’s face it: The press has a problem reporting good news. Two Americans died of Ebola and cable TV flipped out; now we’re Ebola-free and no one seems to care. The same thing happened with the flood of migrant children across the Mexican border, which was a horrific crisis until it suddenly wasn’t.

Yes, the press, being owned by corporations, focuses much more on what will get attention (and thus money) rather than giving us a full picture. Isn't that, you know, sort of a bad thing? That the media is increasingly owned by a smaller and smaller number of corporations? Seems a little contrary to the idea that things are "awesome" in America.

The media keep us in a perpetual state of panic about spectacular threats to our safety — Ebola, sharks, terrorism — but we’re much likelier to die in a car accident. Although, it ought to be said, much less likely than we used to be; highway fatalities are down 25 percent in a decade.

This is just getting farcical. Not even deranged right-wing demagogues tried to convince us that highway fatalities were going to destroy the country. Who cares if they're down? Sure, it's nice, but bringing it up just distracts from any of the threats that the country actually faces.

The other problem in acknowledging good news, not just for the press but for the public, is that it has come to feel partisan, like an endorsement of whoever occupies the White House. Republican leaders have exacerbated this problem by describing everything Obama has done — his 2009 stimulus package, his 2010 Wall Street reforms, his 2013 tax hikes on high earners, his various anti-pollution regulations aimed at coal-fired power plants, and most of all Obamacare — as “job-killing” catastrophes that would obliterate the economy. It’s hard to point out that the economy is humming along nicely without making those doom-and-gloom predictions sound ill-advised and over-the-top. Because they were. Liberals who predicted disaster when Obama refused to nationalize the banking system during the financial crisis and when Republicans insisted on the harsh budget cuts in the 2013 “sequester” were wrong, too. Disaster hasn’t happened.

I don't know of any liberals who predicted "disaster" when Obama didn't nationalize the banking system or when the sequester went into place. I do know of a number of liberals who predicted that bailing out the banks with no strings attached would keep them unaccountable and "too big to fail" (it did) and that the sequester cuts would hurt the economy and lower-income Americans (they did). But why bother with actual facts when you can stoop to lazy false equivalencies and absurd oversimplifications? 

As ideologically inconvenient as that may be for chronic complainers on the left and right — and for pundit types invested in their bad-year-for-Obama narrative — it’s wonderful for the country. You don’t have to endorse Obama’s economic philosophy to realize that it hasn’t wreaked short-term havoc, just as you don’t have to endorse the Obama or George W. Bush anti-terror philosophies to acknowledge that America hasn’t endured a rash of terror attacks since 2001.

Virtually the only people who predicted that "short-term havoc" would come from Obama's economic policies were those on the far right. The left-wing criticisms of them have consistently been more focused on long-term, not short-term, effects, and the long-term outcome is not all that bright. The line about terror attacks sums up this article pretty well, though; let's celebrate the fact that something didn't happen when there was no credible reason to think it would, anyway. And now for the big finish:

The U.S. is still plagued by inadequate public schools, crumbling infrastructure, soaring college tuition costs, stark inequality. Many Americans want accountability for reckless bankers, torturers and fatal choke-holders. Washington is still almost as dysfunctional as everyone says it is. Congress this session really was the second least productive ever. And even though Obama is winding down the U.S. involvement in overseas wars, the world remains a scary place. There’s still plenty to worry about.

But for now be merry! And may the new year be as awesome as this year.

Yeah, we have subpar public schools, subpar infrastructure, above average income inequality, unaccountable bankers, unaccountable cops, unaccountable federal agencies, and a government that doesn't work. But other than that, things are awesome! Oh, and I like how the new Iraq-Syria War we've gotten ourselves involved in still just doesn't count in the minds of people like Grunwald. Seriously, though, how could he not just read that paragraph and realize what a stupid idea this article was? It's fine to want to discuss good news, but you're actually going to say things are looking good in a country with these sorts of problems (many of which are getting worse, not better)?

There's a pretty simple reason that Michael Grunwald would write such a brain-dead article (apart from the fact that he himself is pretty brain-dead): a small amount of research exposes him as yet another Obama defender far more concerned with preserving a good image of the president than actually examining the facts in a meaningful way. His case is much like that of many other Democratic Party loyalists. But the thing is, things aren't awesome in America, and Americans know that. Pretending they are doesn't change anything, and it also doesn't get Democrats elected. It just makes the people who do it look like idiots; but then again, with Grunwald here, if the shoe fits...

John Brennan Gets Orwellian On Us

Photo Credit: Reuters

In light of the newly released Senate report on the CIA's "enhanced interrogation methods" (also known as torture, to us normal folks), documented liar and CIA chief John Brennan gave a rather interesting speech. I mean that not in the sense that it was actually interesting to listen to, because based on what I saw of it, Brennan makes Noam Chomsky's speeches sound bombastic in their energy. No, rather, it was interesting because of how shockingly Orwellian it was. I thought I'd take the opportunity here to look at it bit by bit.

"It was 8:46 a.m. on the morning of September 11^th, 2001, when the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City was struck by an aircraft commandeered by al-Qa’ida terrorists. Seventeen minutes later, the clear blue skies over Manhattan were pierced yet again by another hijacked aircraft, this one tearing into the adjacent South Tower." Ah, good. Glad to see we're still using 9/11 to excuse everything we've done wrong for the last thirteen years. It hasn't gotten old or tired at all yet. And--no exaggeration--the first five paragraphs of Brennan's speech are basically just recounting 9/11. I'm not trying to be insensitive; I realize that, for every American old* enough to remember it (myself included), it's not something that will be forgotten, nor should it be. But it's downright disgusting to use it as a distraction from the wrongdoings of our own government, as Brennan does here.

These first five paragraphs expose a great deal already, as Brennan prattles on about how the Pentagon is "the proud symbol and heart of our Nation's military" and how the terrorist attacks would "plunge us into a seemingly never-ending war." Because, you know, it wasn't our choice to invade countries, or bomb them, or use drone strikes--we had to. The terrorists made us do it, so don't blame us.

Throughout the first dozen paragraphs of Brennan's speech, he goes to great pain to reinforce the simple, black-and-white narrative that al-Qaeda are the bad guys and the CIA are the good guys, going so far as to call al-Qaeda "an evil we couldn't fathom." It's amazing that any public official can use this sort of hyperbole without being laughed at. Killing innocent civilians as a means of achieving your goals? Oh, yeah, God knows the US, and the CIA in particular, could never fathom that level of evil.

Finally launching into the discussion of the detention program and the torture employed against some of the detainees, Brennan states that "EITs" (quite the cozy little acronym, isn't it?) were "determined at the time to be lawful [by the Department of Justice] and...duly authorized by the Bush Administration." Yes, "determined" to be lawful. Because, of course, the DOJ doesn't just "determine" anything lawful whenever it's convenient for it. Oh, and the Bush administration authorized it. So don't blame us, guys.

Brennan, while claiming to agree with Obama's stance against torture, argues that "the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al Qa’ida and prevent additional terrorist attacks" and that "whatever your views are on EITs, our Nation – and in particular this Agency – did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep the country strong and secure." Sure. That's it. That's why we're so safe now, right? Oh wait, I forgot, we're supposedly in grave danger of a terrorist attack at any time, which is why we need those NSA programs, and the PATRIOT Act, and the new war against ISIS. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Finally arriving at the point in his speech where he addresses the report he's supposedly responding to, Brennan states that "we gave the effort our full support, providing an unprecedented amount of sensitive CIA documents to the [Senate] Committee and devoting considerable resources to help it with its review." Right, and, you know, spying on their computers, but why mention that ugly little detail? Claiming that the Committee's methods were "flawed," Brennan nonetheless says much of it is line with what the CIA itself has concluded, and that "[a]cknowledging our mistakes and absorbing the lessons of the past is fundamental to our ability to succeed in our mission and is one of the great strengths of our organization." Right. "Mistakes." The CIA doesn't commit crimes against humanity or act with utter disregard to human life, it just makes "mistakes" every once in a while.

The use of this euphemism becomes particularly comical right after, as Brennan tells us that "[i]n a limited number of cases, Agency officers used interrogation techniques that had not been authorized, were abhorrent, and rightly should be repudiated by all. And we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes." Even when CIA officers take unauthorized and "abhorrent" actions, they're still just mistakes. This is like if the pope gave a speech about the "mistakes" some priests made when they were alone with little boys.

Brennan goes on, "It is vitally important to recognize, however, that the overwhelming majority of officers involved in the program carried out their responsibilities faithfully and in accordance with the legal and policy guidance they were provided. They did what they were asked to do in the service of our Nation...those officers’ actions should neither be criticized nor conflated with the actions of the few who did not follow the guidance issued." That's right, CIA officers are now beyond criticism as long as their following the agency's "guidance." Hey, who can blame ya when you're just following orders, after all?

And, again, when "representations about the program that were used or approved by Agency officers were inaccurate, imprecise, or fell short of our tradecraft standards" that was just another instance of "mistakes" the CIA made--certainly not deliberately misleading the public, as the Senate report concluded the CIA had done. In any case, "[w]e have acknowledged such mistakes, and I have been firm in declaring that they were unacceptable for an Agency whose reputation and value to the policymaker rests on the precision of the language it uses every day in intelligence reporting and analysis." Right. The agency whose head refers to torture as "enhanced interrogation techniques" relies on precision of language.

"One of the most frustrating aspects of the Study," says Brennan, "is that it conveys a broader view of the CIA and its officers as untrustworthy." Yeah, geez, guys, how could you portray a secretive agency that recently spied on members of Congress and has supported numerous dictators and human rights violations as being untrustworthy? What's next--we'll be accusing the KKK of being racist?

After a few final paragraphs of sickeningly self-laudatory statements about the CIA ("Most CIA successes will never be known, as we are an intelligence service that carries out its mission without fanfare and without seeking praise." Riiiiiggght, that's why the agency is so unwillingly to talk about its "accomplishments."), Brennan's speech finally comes to a close. Never have I read a better example of the way in which public officials lie, distort the truth,  and cloak the most despicable policies with sophisticated language and euphemisms. As George Orwell himself put it, "Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." I'll close on that note, as I don't think any quote could better respond to this speech.



*NOTE: This post originally said "everyone American enough" where it was intended to say "every American old enough;" the first version was a typo.