Tea Party Jihad

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David Horsey has taken another look on the seemingly unending "scandal investigations" by the GOP and has come up with a very interesting word to describe the activity which has essentially brought Congress to a standstill.

Now that more extensive, dispassionate reporting has been done about the "scandal” at the IRS, it is abundantly obvious that what is being called “targeting” of tea party organizations and other conservative groups was the result of bureaucratic confusion, not political conspiracy.

The facts, of course, will not get in the way of this latest Republican jihad against the Obama administration. Republicans will continue to pump up the illusion of scandal for weeks to come and, just as some folks on the right remain convinced that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, those same people will take to their graves the conviction that he and his minions at the IRS plotted to impede the liberties of tea party activists. ...

The shortcut they used in trying to identify groups whose political activities might bar them from getting a tax break was to employ keywords like “tea party” and “patriot” in data searches. As a result, numerous conservative groups got snared for extra scrutiny. But they were not alone. More than 400 organizations of various types got special attention, including two dozen or more liberal groups.

That is not so much a case of targeting as it is an example of casting a wide net to scoop up a variety of politically oriented associations. And it definitely falls far short of a serious scandal. Watergate, this is not. Nor does it have any of the prurient appeal of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. In the end, no one is going to care that a few tax bureaucrats buried by an avalanche of paperwork found a clumsy way to try to dig themselves out.   [Emphasis added]

The reference to "this latest Republican jihad" is almost perfect.  It's only flaw is that it's not really fair to the Islamic sense of jihad, which is a righteous battle.  Still, the Tea Party wing of the GOP probably does see this as a holy war and the rest of the party is only too happy to go along with the wackaloons if it means gains in 2014 and victory in 2016.

The important fact, however, is that while the IRS used shortcuts, not just conservative groups got snagged.  Liberal groups also got audited or at least checked out.  Unfortunately our fearless leader threw a couple of IRS officials under the bus before getting all the facts himself.

Also unfortunate is what all this mucking around in faux scandals is costing the country: money and time that could be better spent on solving real problems.

But, hey!  That would involve buckling down and doing some work that would actually benefit the nation.  We can't be having that, can we?

Unknown Unknowns

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David Horsey is a bit naive in this column, even more naive than I am.  The shift from college student to terrorist under our way of thinking is really not as simple as Horsey seems to be suggesting.

It’s not hard to concoct a scenario for Tamerlan that ends with a bombing. But Dzokhar?

Seven years younger than Tamerlan, Dzokhar came to the U.S. when he was 8 years old. Recently, he became a citizen. In between, he lived a relatively normal American life.

He was a successful student and competed on his high school wrestling team. He had many friends. Those friends say he was upbeat, always smiling. He was enrolled at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. He lived in a dorm. He went to parties. He worked out at the gym.

To one teacher, he did express an interest in the troubled history of his distant family homeland, but he seems to have been happy living a well-adjusted American life.

How could Dzokhar have pivoted from that to the vicious act of which he is accused?

It is good that police were able to apprehend him alive. If and when he recovers from his serious wounds, Dzokhar may be able to enlighten us about his apparent turn to heartless violence. In the meantime, there will be plenty of speculation. ...

Dzokhar is 19 years old, an age when many young men act on impulse and sudden passions.

It is the age when boys trying to prove their manhood are easy to recruit. It may be to the military, it may be to religion, it may be to the brotherhood of a hard-drinking fraternity or it may be to a cause that promises them the chance to change the world.   [Emphasis added]

While, like David Horsey, I am interested in Dzokhar's motivation for the bombing, I am doubtful that a simple "phase of life" change is behind it.  I am also not certain that even if that is the case the reasoning will be particularly helpful to our understanding of just why this kind of incident can occur.

Echidne too is curious about the motivation, but also about the semantics we are using to discuss the case of the two brothers from Chechnya.

So.  At the time I write this we don't know what may have motivated the Tsarnaev brothers, in any case, but the flag of war has already been raised.   Even if the older brother had raised such a flag himself, taking that seriously would be a mistake.  It would give him (and any copycats) exactly the kind of martyrdom and glory they desire.  Being called a criminal is not glamorous.  It is also much closer to the truth.   [Emphasis added]

Echidne's entire post should be read because it makes a pretty solid case that the way we frame the issue clarifies the issue, or at least should.  An attack on our soil is terrorism.  Our attack (via drone, say) on another country's soil? Simply a rational attack to protect our interests.  This kind of analysis can be very useful because it makes how Dzokhar will be charged and will be treated part of the discourse.  It should also cause us to extend the analysis to our own behavior.

And Yet Another War

Iraq. Afghanistan/Pakistan. Libya. Yemen.

Yemen?

Yes. Yemen. We are sending drones and bombing sites in Yemen according to the New York Times.

The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power. ...

The extent of America’s war in Yemen has been among the Obama administration’s most closely guarded secrets, as officials worried that news of unilateral American operations could undermine Mr. Saleh’s tenuous grip on power. Mr. Saleh authorized American missions in Yemen in 2009, but placed limits on their scope and has said publicly that all military operations had been conducted by his own troops.

Run jointly by the Pentagon and the CIA, this secret war isn't so secret anymore. We've been bombing parts of Yemen to weaken Al Qaeda elements there for years, presumably throughout President Obama's first term and probably during President Bush's tenure. And, like our drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we've been hitting innocent civilians as well as the pesky evil-doers, on the taxpayers' dime but without our knowledge and without explicit Senate approval.

Now, with our "ally," Mr. Saleh, another Middle East tyrant about to be deposed and healing from wounds in Saudi Arabia, all restrictions on when and where those strikes take place appear to have disappeared. The action is ramping up.

That AUMF passed by the Senate more than nine years ago certainly has come in handy, eh?

How Shrill!

Somebody ought to email Paul Krugman's latest column to the White House and to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. It might clarify their thinking and strengthen their tactics when it comes to all the major issues facing this country, including health care. Mr. Krugman concludes, and rightfully so, that there is no longer any such thing as bipartisanship.

Using the example of conservatives' unseemly glee at the failure of President Obama to persuade the International Olympic Committee to grant Chicago the Games as a springboard, he points out what most of us on the left have been saying for a long time.

...the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America. [Emphasis added]

Why such a callous disregard for polity from the GOP, especially when it comes to more serious matters such as health care? Simple: they don't believe it proper that someone else has the power now, someone who just isn't of the aristocratic body.

...ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern. ...

The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand. [Emphasis added]

Honestly, it really doesn't take 95 votes in the Senate to pass a bill, nor a two-thirds majority in the House. Democrats have the numbers. It's time to quit the bipartisanship tango. It's time to do what's right for the country. Leave the GOP where it belongs, the Antebellum.

American Jihad

Neal Gabler has an absolutely stunning op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times. His thesis is that the reason liberals have not been able to accomplish much in the last thirty years in governance is that conservativism has been transformed from a political ideology to a religion.

It's understandable that liberals prefer to think of their subordination as a matter of their own inadequacies or of conservative wiles. Theoretically, you can learn how to improve your message or how to match wits with adversaries, and a lot of liberal hand-wringing has been dedicated to doing just that. But it is becoming increasingly clear that liberals haven't just been succumbing to superior message control, or even to a superior political narrative (conservatives' frontier individualism versus liberals' communitarianism). They are up against something far more intractable and far more difficult to defeat. They are up against religion.

Perhaps the single most profound change in our political culture over the last 30 years has been the transformation of conservatism from a political movement, with all the limitations, hedges and forbearances of politics, into a kind of fundamentalist religious movement, with the absolute certainty of religious belief.

Gabler asserts that no amount of rational persuasion, no good faith negotiation, none of the normal tools of democracy will work against such fundamentalist belief because facts just don't matter. Only belief matters. I must admit that would certainly explain the gun-toting teabaggers, the 10thers, the birthers, and the shout downs at recent town hall meetings, but surely 40% of the American public isn't quite this nuts.

Gabler would reply that it doesn't matter. Enough are to make the difference between a functioning democracy in which the majority rules and minority rights are protected and a dictatorship of the orthodox.

The tea-baggers who hate President Obama with a fervor that is beyond politics; the fear-mongers who warn that Obama is another Hitler or Stalin; the wannabe storm troopers who brandish their guns and warn darkly of the president's demise; the cable and talk-radio blowhards who make a living out of demonizing Obama and tarring liberals as America-haters -- these people are not just exercising their rights within the political system. They honestly believe that the political system -- a system that elected Obama -- is broken and only can be fixed by substituting their certainty for the uncertainties of American politics. ...

There is something terrifying in this. The media have certainly been cowed; they treat intolerance as if it were legitimate political activity. So have many politicians, and not just the conservative ones who know that if they don't fall in line, they will be run over. This political fundamentalism has also invaded the general culture in deleterious ways. The ugly incivility of recent months is partly the result of political fundamentalists who have nothing but contempt for opposing viewpoints, which gives them license to shout down opponents or threaten them, just as jihadis everywhere do.

Mr. Gabler offers no solution to this state of affairs, thereby implying that there is none, and that in itself is terrifying. I don't completely buy into such a scenario, but I do believe his analysis is more than a metaphor for what ails the country. While the media is currently "cowed," as much by the chants of the noise machine as the drive to keep corporate owners and advertisers happy, I still have hope that the media will come to its senses and will return to its proper role. The mere fact that Mr. Gabler's brilliant essay was published is a hopeful sign. I also have faith that the American public will grow tired of the incessant shrillness and will demand reasonable explanations and rational solutions which, while not perfect, will still improve the lot of us all.

But I could be wrong. And if I am, we are doomed.