Rubin Sandwich And Whine

Chris Hayes is something of an earnest Boy Scout type and if anything he's unerringly polite to his guests, no matter how ridiculous they are and no matter how rude and obnoxious they may be towards him as a member of the "liberal MSNBC lamestream media".  But not even Hayes can get through 5 minutes with Jennifer Rubin without bursting into incredulous laughter at the prospect that President Obama should be negotiating the most favorable deal possible with Iranian leaders that Rubin simultaneously wants deposed through "regime change".





"What you do is present them with the same choice they had in 2003," Rubin says as she winds up towards her big plan. "Why did the mullahs stop enriching in 2003? Because they were scared to death they were going to lose the regime. We had just taken out Saddam Hussein. That is the only time they shut down their program. They only way we get them to peacefully give up their weapons if if they have a choice between regime survival and nuclear war."

Hayes at this point looks like he's suddenly discovered a flying giant marmot that knows Proust. "You're saying that the Iraq War brought the Iranians to the table?"

"It's FACT! I mean you can talk to you know, people in the region, you can talk to the Iranians, I don't think it's a fact in dispute. That's why they gave it up."

OK. Sure. Right.

"Should the US have a policy of regime change towards the Iranian regime?" he asks.

"Eventually, yes. Eventually, we should want evil regimes to listen to their people, to have free and fair elections, we should have supported the Green Revolution, again that was Hillary Clinton's part..."

Chris Hayes by now has had enough.  "How can you possibly have a policy of regime change and simultaneously negotiate with the regime the you officially want to change?"

"Well that's a little bit of a contradiction, but you know you should ask Hillary Clinton(?)..."

Hayes is using both hands by now.  "That's the whole contradiction!"

"...why she gave the Green Revolution short shrift, we really should have supported them."

"I am glad, I am genuinely glad you admitted that we should have a regime change policy towards Iranian regime..." he laughs, unable to continue the conversation with this nutcase seriously any longer.

"Yes, absolutely!" she chimes in.

"...because there's so much disingenuous nonsense being spouted."

Thank you, Chris.

Last Call For Chris Versus The Stupid

On Monday, Chris Hayes defended his "interview" with Nevada State Assemblywoman Michele Fiore last week by saying that it's necessary to "talk to the other side" and that his show isn't an echo chamber.

"But you know what?  This is a big country with a lot of political conflict in it, in case you have not noticed, and politics is about having those arguments.  Not just talking to yourself, not just hearing what you want to hear, but actually learning by listening to what the other side is saying.  Not that they're necessarily right or instantly persuaded or allowed to go unchallenged, but it is important to understand how they are thinking on the issue, how they see the world."

"It is not a wrestling match or a high school debate you need to win in the moment.  And the point is not to bring someone on and thoroughly humiliate them on national television, no.  The point is this:  These folks, like Assemblywoman Fiore, are people we share this country with. I want to hear from them. And I think I have a better understanding of American politics because of it. So we're going to keep doing that. And you, please, keep sending us your feedback."

It's a pretty noble argument.  But if Chris Hayes understood American politics better because of these steamrolling episodes, he'd understand that his nobility is being used against him in order to score political points, and that the people he brings on the show in this capacity are not interested in the goddamn least in sharing the country with the rest of us but "taking it back" by any means necessary.  His nobility, while admirable, is completely one-sided.

What Hayes has actually constructed here is really a "both sides do it" and "both sides have equally valid viewpoints worth listening to" argument.  There are cases where this is true, but Friday night wasn't one of them, not by a long shot.  This was a person who wanted to score cheap points at Chris Hayes's expense, and she did.  Hayes's idealism is great in an ideal world, but against Tea Party Republicans who practice dangerous eliminationist tactics, it's folly.

The Michele Fiore defense was bad enough, but then today Chris Hayes compounded his bad behavior with a piece in the Nation that compares the fight to abolish slavery to climate change.  Granted, he acknowledges that this is a bad idea about twelve paragraphs in:

It is almost always foolish to compare a modern political issue to slavery, because there’s nothing in American history that is slavery’s proper analogue. So before anyone misunderstands my point, let me be clear and state the obvious: there is absolutely no conceivable moral comparison between the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans and the burning of carbon to power our devices. Humans are humans; molecules are molecules. The comparison I’m making is a comparison between the political economy of slavery and the political economy of fossil fuel.

But then two paragraphs later goes right back to demonstrating exactly why this is a bad idea.

The connection between slavery and fossil fuels, however, is more than metaphorical. Before the widespread use of fossil fuels, slaves were one of the main sources of energy (if not the main source) for societies stretching back millennia. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, nearly all energy to power societies flowed from the natural ecological cascade of sun and food: the farmhands in the fields, the animals under saddle, the burning of wood or grinding of a mill. A life of ceaseless exertion.

What he says is true, but it becomes dry, bloodless statistics rather than the psychological, physical, social, and mental horror that was slavery.  Even this seemingly innocuous piece glosses over the fact that it's the descendent of those slaves who have the fewest resources to address climate change today.

Later on in the piece Hayes tries again to save himself:

Let me pause here once again to be clear about what the point of this extended historical comparison is and is not. Comparisons to slavery are generally considered rhetorically out of bounds, and for good reason. We are walking on treacherous terrain. The point here is not to associate modern fossil fuel companies with the moral bankruptcy of the slaveholders of yore, or the politicians who defended slavery with those who defend fossil fuels today.

In fact, the parallel I want to highlight is between the opponents of slavery and the opponents of fossil fuels. Because the abolitionists were ultimately successful, it’s all too easy to lose sight of just how radical their demand was at the time: that some of the wealthiest people in the country would have to give up their wealth. That liquidation of private wealth is the only precedent for what today’s climate justice movement is rightly demanding: that trillions of dollars of fossil fuel stay in the ground. It is an audacious demand, and those making it should be clear-eyed about just what they’re asking. They should also recognize that, like the abolitionists of yore, their task may be as much instigation and disruption as it is persuasion. There is no way around conflict with this much money on the line, no available solution that makes everyone happy. No use trying to persuade people otherwise.

The issue is not that Hayes is wrong, but that trying to separate out the economic ramifications of slavery from the moral ones is impossible.  Hayes tries to do it in order to avoid the treacherous ground he mentions, but instead ends up stomping all over it.

In both the Fiore defense and his economics of slavery piece, Hayes's well-meaning intentions end up blowing up in his face.  That seems to happen to him an awful, awful lot.  Maybe there's a reason for that?

In other words, when I make arguments about useful idiocy, Chris Hayes is Exhibit A.

The Re-Education Of Chris Hayes

After getting rolled by Koch Industries operative Jennifer Stefano on his show last month, I'm glad to see Chris Hayes finally do a segment on the Perpetual Right Wing Outrage Machine as he connected the dots from the Bundy Ranch standoff to the GOP party's incessant need for greater and greater quantities of red meat in order to be fed.  Thursday's open:




It's a good segment, and it means that Hayes is at least aware that conservatives are not his friends, and they are not looking for meaningful debate.  They are looking for outrage to stoke the resentment of the base, always.  That goes for Hayes, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, and the other young guns on the left:  you will never be more than the "Juice Box Mafia" to the right, so stop treating them like they're your pals.

Sadly, Chris's learning curve is a flatline as when Friday came around and he decided to interview Nevada State Assemblywoman (and complete Tea Party nutjob) Michele Fiore, he was bullied, badgered, and steamrolled again.



Fiore was rude, awful, and disrespectful.  Chris flopped around like the punching bag he is.  Fiore referred to undocumented immigrants as "terrorists", called the attempt by BLM to get Cliven Bundy to obey the law "suspicious" and cut Hayes off several times, eventually justifying the militia threats of violence by saying "Don’t come here with guns and expect the American people not to fire back."

 His response later Friday evening?

My exchange w/ @VoteFiore over cows and their ultimate fate might be one of my favorite ever on @allinwithchris http://t.co/sIXfKnjr74
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 19, 2014

The woman makes Michele Bachmann look like Steven Hawking, and Chris Hayes thought the interview was "one of his favorite ever".  It was embarrassing and stupid and Chris Hayes walked into the jet intake again.

Jesus wept.

I'm Surprised It Took This Long

Tommy Christopher points out this ugly steamrolling of Chris Hayes by Koch Brothers goon Jennifer Stefano.  She's all smiles at the beginning, and Chris Hayes of course tries his earnest best to be above the fray as the topic is Obamacare.  Five minutes later, Hayes is visibly stunned by the amount of pure bullshit Stefano has spewed on his show and he's clearly not sure what to do about it.



By the end Stefano is all but calling Hayes a woman-hating criminal.  He's had Stefano on his show before, but he's shocked that Stefano is ripping into him personally.  I'm sure he saw her as a friend up until this point, because the whole purpose of Chris Hayes's show is to have a decent discussion on the topics of the day's news.

The poor naive little lamb.

News flash, Chris:  Conservatives from Americans for Prosperity are not there to be your friend.  They are there to kick you in the head and spout as many lies per minute as they can about President Obama and his policies.  They are there to do exactly what Stefano did to you, that is use you like a punching bag and pummel you on your own show.  They are daring you to devolve into a screaming match, because lord knows if your goal is to try to inform your viewers about the Affordable Care Act, her job is to stop you from doing that, and she did exactly that.

The lesson you're supposed to draw from this is that conservatives from think tanks are not your friends, Chris.  They are your tormentors.

Maybe you should stop inviting them on your show?

Last Call For Going It Alone

Steve M on the hand-wringing in the Village Media about Millennials not trusting institutions:

Under Obama, millennials can't get jobs and can't pay off student loans, and their parents have been struggling financially for years -- but millennials didn't exactly see their elders thrive even during the supposedly better days of the Bush presidency, when the only way a non-rich person could get an extra sliver of the pie was by tapping into what turned out to be hyperinflated home equity. America's military might was more or less useless under Bush, and it's not much use under Obama. Churches, then and now, were overpoliticized and scandal-plagued. D.C. has been reduced to permanent dysfunction by a cabal of nihilists -- we know they're Republicans, though most millennials probably assume, because they're constantly told this, that "both sides do it."

Maybe millennials think institutions suck because institutions suck.

Guy has a point.  Hell, Chris Hayes wrote an entire book about said point.

Ross Douthat however just thinks we're leaving the door open to fascism because, hey, the Internet.

You don’t have to see a fascist or Communist revival on the horizon (I certainly don’t) to see this argument’s potential relevance for our apparently individualistic future. You only have to look at the place where millennials — and indeed, most of us — are clearly seeking new forms of community today.

That place is the online realm, which offers a fascinating variation on Nisbet’s theme. Like modernity writ large, it promises emancipation and offers new forms of community that transcend the particular and local. But it requires a price, in terms of privacy surrendered, that past tyrannies could have only dreamed of exacting from their subjects.

This surrender could prove to be benign. But it’s still noteworthy that today’s vaguely totalitarian arguments don’t usually come from political demagogues. They come from enthusiasts for the online Panopticon, the uploaded world where everyone will be transparent to everyone else.

That kind of future is far from inevitable. But as Nisbet would argue, and as the rising generation of Americans may yet need to learn, it probably cannot be successfully resisted by individualism alone.

To recap, the Glibertarian is worried that without enough religion and/or government regulation in our lives(!), we'll all become victims of digital totalitarianism because when given the freedom to operate away from the failed institutions that bind us, human nature isn't all about the online utopia, but Orwellian control.  It's almost like we need a certain amount of baseline societal norms in order to operate without becoming alpha male dickweeds.  Call them "rules of the road" even.

Mull on that point for a second.

Privilege Is A Hell Of A Drug

Last night MSNBC All In host Chris Hayes talked about Colorado's legalization of marijuana and NY Times columnist David Brooks admitting that he smoked pot as a teenager, but I will give Hayes all the credit in the world for his story of checking out the Republican National Convention in Philly in 2000 and realizing he still had a bag of weed in his glasses case, heading towards a search checkpoint for convention security.



Hayes's on-air admission, in part:

"I've re-run that incident countless times since, and while I have no earthly idea why the cop not only didn't arrest me but decided to give me my weed back, the best case seems to be that he looked at me like I could have been some Senator's son, and that arresting me was going to possibly cause a whole bunch of headaches that he did not need on a night when he was mostly there to make sure no one was bringing weapons or explosives into that building. 

"And I can tell you as sure as I am sitting here before you that if I was a black kid with cornrows instead of a white kid with glasses, my ass would have been in the back of the squad car faster than you could say 'George W. Bush'."

Thank you, Chris Hayes, for personally admitting that truth about our society, drugs like marijuana, and who actually gets arrested for them.

More people need to admit that America is not colorblind, and never will be.  Not in my lifetime, at least.