decline of conservative intellectualism

WSJ has an article about how Palin represents the Republicans' 20 (40?) -year slide into anti-intellectual populism. What once was a movement of ideas and exchange has (long) become about denigrating knowledge, the people who have it, and the institutions that produce it:

For the past 40 years American conservatism has been politically ascendant, in no small part because it was also intellectually ascendant. In 1955 sociologist Daniel Bell could publish a collection of essays on "The New American Right" that treated it as a deeply anti-intellectual force, a view echoed a few years later in Richard Hofstadter's influential "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" (1963). But over the next decade and a half all that changed.

He chronicles the rise of conservative intelligentsia, and describes it as a refreshing alternative to then-ascendent liberalism and the post-60s craziness of leftist politics. But then, in the 80s, "leading conservatives frustrated with the left-leaning press and university establishment began to speak of an 'adversary culture of intellectuals.'"

Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

And with Palin they reached their apotheosis. The question is where it goes from here.

past promise and future hope

Trying to just bask in happiness and enjoy a newfound freedom from political blogs. But of course there's commentary out there to be read!

CT is an interesting place for reflection, given its Canadian base. Kieran relays an article by a Canadian historian Rob MacDougall, who might just be on to something about America:

“We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” said Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. … King went on: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

And here Sancho [Panza] or Sacvan [Bercovitch] whispers to the guy standing next to him, “Were they? Really? If we went back in time and asked the architects of the republic–Jefferson and Madison and Washington and the rest–did you mean for this to apply to your slaves too, would they agree? … Because it would have saved a lot of trouble if they’d spelled all this out in 1789.”

The black belt rhetorical jiu jitsu of the “I Have A Dream” speech is that King pulls it off. He convinced the better part of a nation that dismantling segregation was not so scary, not so radical, but really what they’d all meant to do all along. They just hadn’t gotten around to it, like the laundry I need to sort, or those slaves Jefferson never quite got to freeing. … And this is an old and hallowed American trick. On July 4th, 1852, Frederick Douglass blistered the ears of his white audience with prophesy … Douglass reveals that, “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” the Constitution is in fact “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” He embraces and celebrates the Constitution as a bulwark against slavery. …

At Seneca Falls in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton cribbed Jefferson’s words for her Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, the intimation being that “of course” the patriarchs of 1776 must have intended equal rights for women. … And so on and so on down through history, with every kind of American reformer looking backward to move forward, couching their goals as nothing more radical than America’s alleged founding ideals.

Maybe this is why we're not the center-right country that the conservatives and media claim we are after each election. The US Constitution, Declaration, and other founding documents provided an aspirational model of progress, which allows change to take place as the fulfillment, not the negation, of the nation's founding promise.

It almost doesn’t matter what Jefferson “really meant” by “all men.” No, that’s not it. It matters. It matters each and every time great and noble promises are broken. But here’s an idea Greil Marcus put in my head: the promises made in the Declaration and the Constitution are so great that their betrayal is an inevitable part of the promise. And that’s what makes them work. Marcus … calls that betrayal “the engine of American history.” The “more perfect union” is a limit approaching infinity. As each generation discovers–inevitably!–that the promises made to them were false, they battle to make them a little more true.

USA! USA!

unacceptable!

Via a Detroit Fox station... Grosse Point woman "accused of denying children candy" if they or their parents support Obama. And that is just too much! LOL. Love that phrasing there -- "denying children candy" -- what a villain!!

and another one gone, another one gone....

Another one bites the dust. Well, dust not bitten yet. But this last-minute homophobia might finish of Mitch McConnell in KY. As always, I'm torn about the situation. No pity for Mitch himself, who whether gay or not sold his soul to the Republican right a long time ago. (And geez, is his record poor across the board!) But it's another chapter in the exploitation of homophobia by traditional labor faction of the left (who it appears is responsible for this).

girls!

Many Sarah Palins at this week's high heel race.

voter suppression guide

TPM roundup of current status, state-by-state.

Oy.

Skinheads arrested in murder spree plot. AP:

The ATF says it has broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree. In court records unsealed Monday, agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target an unnamed but predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads.

That's all they have, but look for more developments over the next few days. Further reports relayed by TPM say that the 102 number comes from 88 + 14. They were going to shoot 88 blacks and decapitate 14. Christ.

So, as we asked last time skinheads on meth were arrested with an anti-Obama plot: Were they just hopped up on drug-inflated plans, or actually serious? Well, so far it seems like they seriously planned to kill 100 people; they didn't think they could get Obama but planned to die trying.

And of course nobody could have anticipated that the Republicans' rhetoric of anti-americanism and racial agitation would have potential violent consequences.

UPDATE: More details from AP. ("Feds disrupt alleged skinhead plot to kill Obama")

eager to incite

TPM has been all over the Todd hoax and the McCain campaign's role in spreading it (which they of course deny, lying about this as they have everything else in this cycle). Oh, and Todd herself is upset with the media for "blowing it out of proportion." Wow.

Now some may to treat this as No Big Deal: Unbalanced girl gins up hoax on her own, without the campaign directing it. But the point of radical right politics is and always has been to set the tone and let the most extreme supporters draw their own conclusions. They then act to make real what the propaganda has told them already is real, but is not being paid attention to because of the biased media.

And as Eugene Robinson said on the Countdown coverage (paraphrase of around 3:40 in):

If the McCain communications director got out ahead of the police in spreading this story to the press, as it appears he did, it indicates not only a willingness to believe it, but an eagerness to incite racial backlash against the Obama campaign in a part of PA where race can be a very raw and divisive issue to this day.

He properly contextualizes it as the age-old "blood libel" of black predators against "the flower of white womanhood." It's sick, as is the camp's eagerness to spread the hoax.

Update: Perp walk!

Update 2: Youtube guy - "What Ashley Todd did wrong". Funny and understated ;)

recanted

Ashley Todd recants. Blames media. CBS:

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, police said.

Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division, said Todd is being charged with making a false police report.

Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

"She just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "She was upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm."

Waah waah. Seems like she might have some mental issues though. Hope she gets help.

As the police say, this wasted a lot of time on their real cases, but it's good that they got to the bottom of it before it turned into a national incident. Meanwhile, the campaign can continue. Too bad the McCain campaign and Palin herself jumped on this one. Nothing like overreacting to poorly sourced intelligence about a pseudo-threat. Pittsburgh will greet us as liberators!!

tires slashed at Obama rally

It's hard to make too much of single incidents, but they do bear recording to see if there is really a change in political extremism this cycle. According to the Fayetteville Observer:

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating.

Hope so.

Millenial YouTube

"Citizen's Cry" - An Internet Video Produced to Inspire the Youth of Today to Vote.

Image of an old woman sitting in a crappy shack, who turns out to be a Millenial regretting her generation's failure to prevent America's decline - because they didn't vote! O NOES!

political violence 2008

Welcome to 1932 -- oh wait, 2008. The GOP returns to its "ugly roots" (Salon: Gary Kamia) in racist paranoia and violence against elites and urban faggotry.

Palin supporter yells out "KILL HIM!!" at rally. Others racially taunt a media sound man.

McCain supporter responds to his question "Who is Barack Obama?" with answer, "A terrorist!"

Looks like it's spreading to Canada too: Cars in front of houses with liberal yard signs have their brakes cut in St Paul. (Digby)

Meanwhile, a porn producer is sentenced to 4 YEARS PRISON for filming consensual activities... while the Abu Ghraib perpetrators in the White House walk free.

Make-believe Maverick

From Rolling Stone, a fairly complete and thoroughly devastating history of John McCain:

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

All in all, "a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty."

consolidating frame

Some recent DailyKos posts to add to AS and others - we may be at a moment where a new liar frame is emerging about McCain. Not because the bloggers are calling out lies like they've been doing, but that the traditional media is shifting (finally) to ignoring the superficial content and going for the real pattern - the consistent lies on all subjects. And if you believe that elections are decided on things like framing, then this is devastating.

What is surprising this election season is that a piece of the megamedia actually seems to be starting to call out campaign lies, as Chris Carlson points out. Some of the traditional media - the old and established media so calcified and concentrated and craven that it failed to examine the lies of the men and women of an administration whose policies McCain and Palin would like to continue for another four years - actually are saying, "wait a minute, that’s frakkin’ bullshit."

Well, they've not gone quite that far.

Also, the loss of intellectual authority then gives other figures cover to oppose you on principle, like Alan Greenspan has just done. (AP: "Greenspan: Country Can't Afford McCain's Tax Cuts")

Cool chart of the tax plans btw. Send to friends!

Les Misbarack

check out Palin as the Thernadiers ;)

Youtube

quoted in entirety

Andrew Sullivan brings it:

If McCain were a blogger, he would have had to retract by now. But he's running for president of the United States, so he can say anything, lie about anything and not have to answer for it. Yesterday, John McCain lied on national television about something that no one disputes in the public record. He was challenged by the only serious journalists on television right now - the hosts of "The View" - about the large number of pork barrel earmarks Sarah Palin sought and secured as governor of Alaska, including the "Bridge To Nowhere" that Palin and McCain lied about and are still lying about in public. Here was his clear and irrefutable statement:

Palin's comments came after McCain sat for a feisty grilling on ABC's "The View," where he claimed erroneously that his running mate hadn't sought money for such pet projects. "Not as governor she didn't," McCain said, ignoring the record.

It has now been a day since McCain lied this explicitly in public. And he hasn't yet retracted his lie. This AP piece is dated as of this afternoon. Why not?

Because if he has to retract this lie, he will have to retract his multiple other lies? While the media demands that Obama respond to things he never said and never meant, McCain is not even asked to retract a bald-faced, massive, obvious, refutable lie.

In the last month, McCain has become the biggest liar in the modern history of presidential politics. He makes Bill Clinton look like George Washington.

Word.

creeping falangism

Ha. Nice title for this story from TPM. McCain campaign caught making up crowd size numbers.

Also from TPM, a reader's comment on the consequences of politics based on lies. Possible end stage campaign theme seems to be shaping up. Josh: "This campaign has shown that while we know McCain has physical courage, he has bad moral character"

it's all our fault

Driftglass gets a little too insulting at times, but damn, he has a point.

Hell, if the election were between the Risen Christ (D) and Satan’s Fiery Cock (R), come election day polling would still peg it at “too close to call”: 45% Risen JC, 45% Lucifer’s Penis, 7% undecided (“My friend Laura says that Mr. Jesus is good on the economy, but I just trust that Fiery Cock fella a little bit more on keeping America safe. And his running mate is so feisty!”), 2% Ron Paul and 1% Ralph “Not a dime’s worth of difference between them!” Nader.

This election was, is and will continue to be over that oblivious 8%.

Maybe it is audacious, but let's hope they do what's right.

rally disruption

McCain cuts speech short due to chanting Obama supporters who were in the area. Media is playing it like he's weak and lost without his gal Palin. Ha.

After lunching with a roundtable of women at Philadelphia’s Down Home Diner, McCain shook hands with supporters and strode up to a podium to deliver a statement. But as he spoke, chants of “Obama, Obama, Obama” filled the room.

Reporters craned forward trying to hear the Arizona senator. Unfortunately for McCain — and possibly overlooked by aides who planned the event — a section of the diner opened up to a market where a crowd had gathered behind a cordon.

Also, this might be the time to link to Adam Kokesh, the "revolutionary patriot" and Vets Against the War member who busted up McCain's acceptance speech. The video linked has some comments on why he disrupted the speech - McCain refused to meet with veterans' groups or discuss their concerns. ("At least Obama pretended to listen" he says) So he decided to deliver an alternate message. Some of his ideas get pretty threatening unfortunately, but looking at things through his eyes, I would be pretty pissed off too.

more levity

And actually about politics. What else from Triumph?

I came here to poop on her but I am in loooove!!

Hopefully we will be able to look back on all this and laugh.