Double G Versus The Crazy

Glenn Greenwald leaps off a building and impales the entire Village at two hundred miles an hour, then goes to get a cheeseburger as he defines the difference between what the Village thinks is crazy if you're a Republican (nothing you can do makes you crazy if you're a Republican) and what a crazy Democrat is (opposing the Iraq War).

As HTML Mencken insightfully noted in what is one of the best blog posts ever written, our political mores demand vehement repudiation of petty acts of incivility (not all, but most) while tolerating and even approving of extremely consequential acts of indecency as long as they're advocated with superficial civility. Those who use curse words to oppose torture, wars and lawbreaking are evil and unSerious (The Angry Left); those who politely and soberly advocate morally repugnant, indecent policies are respected and Serious. As long as one adheres to Beltway decorum, one can advocate the most amoral and even murderous policies without any repercussions whatsoever; it is only disruptive and impolite behavior that generates intense upset. Beltway culture hates "incivility" (public use of bad words) but embraces full-scale substantive indecency (torture, lawbreaking, unjustified wars, ownership of government by corporations, etc.).

All of that leads to the most interesting and revealing aspect of the Politico article. Needless to say, no establishment media outlet is permitted to write an article that includes criticisms of "one side" without emphasizing that the criticisms apply just the same to "the other side" -- regardless of whether that's actually true. That's what "balance" means. Thus, Politico publishes an article discussing the fact that the Right is dominated by crackpots and it is therefore required to claim that the Left is, too. Here are their examples to provide the balance needed so as to not upset Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh:

Nor are Democrats strangers to having their crazy uncles take center stage. During the run-up to the Iraq war, for example, Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and David Bonior (D-Mich.) famously flew to Baghdad, where McDermott asserted that he believed the president would "mislead the American public" to justify the war. The trip made it a cakewalk for critics to describe the Democratic Party as chock-a-block with traitorous radicals.

That's one of the most amazing passages I can recall reading. Even now -- when everyone knows that the President did exactly that which Rep. McDermott, in 2002, said he was doing: "misleading the American public to justify the war" -- those who pointed out that truth are deemed "crazy."

Got that? Saying the President wasn't born in Hawaii and is a secret Muslim plant is patriotic dissent. Saying that members of the Bush administration lied about intelligence in order to gin up an attack on Iraq, insanity.

The far more important problem is that the Village sees the two are morally equivalent, and then use those who opposed the war as justification for spreading birtherism and other mindless hatred. The Village has been all over that for a while now, and it's just plain incorrect.

Hasn't stopped them before, of course. Do read the whole Double G article however, it's a good one.