I Remember Three Weeks Ago Like It Was Yesterday

But John Yoo and John Bolton don't. Their NYT Op-Ed, Restore the Senate’s Treaty Power, is a particularly sad example of Republicans doing a 180 with the election of Obama. The piece is an attack on Obama for making an end-run around the treaty process -- something he has not actually done, but could do at some point in the future, maybe. (Clearly a compelling subject for an op-ed.) You might remember John Yoo as the fellow who argued that no treaty or law on earth could stop the President from crushing an innocent child's testicles if he felt the urge. Or perhaps you remember him as the man who wrote that "our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

Yet here is that same John Yoo arguing that the power of the President should be kept carefully in check. Curious. It's almost as if his arguments were less a product of careful legal reasoning than a product of the former White House resident being a Republican.

There is a lot about the past eight years Republicans would like us to forget - including the philosophy of government they endlessly espoused. Pieces like the NYT op-ed read like the products of amnesiacs unaware of their own actions just weeks previous. Suddenly it's near impossible to find arguments that were commonplace only a month ago.

The President has essentially unlimited power during wartime, where wartime includes undeclared wars of indeterminate length against unnamed foes. Anyone remember that one?

How about that anything the President does is legal by definition? See many Republicans arguing that one these days?

Disrespecting the President is disrespecting the office, which is disrespecting America. And even if we disagree with the President it's our duty as loyal Americans to support him. If we bellyache about the actions of the President our enemies are embiggened. I seem to recall hearing that one more than a hand full of times.

The willingness to immediately cast off these arguments as soon as Obama was elected is a tacit admission that the arguments were never more than posturing. The true belief of Republicans is apparently not that the President deserves respect and power but that Republicans do. I suppose these hypocritical Republicans believe that "progressives" will immediately cast off their former arguments as well and invent an entirely different set of principles now that Obama is in office.

Perhaps on this blog I'll now argue that the Vice-President is both all and no branches of government, that the Bill of Rights is antiquated, and that anyone who criticizes the President should pipe down or move to France.

Sadly I actually believed most if not all of what I've written here, despite the change from (R) to (D) in our highest office.

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Explaining Feminist Blogosphere Eruptions

You can set your watch to Old Faithful and to dust ups in the Feminist blogosphere.
This is a bit of a departure from my usual stuff, but I find it an interesting to diverge occasionally from civil liberties and media criticism. I'm not going to bother to link to the blog storm in question.

There's nothing quite like a good old fashioned blog storm. What is it about Feminist blogs that makes these eruptions a common occurrence? My theory: accuracy, honesty and critical thinking are not things you can turn on and off. When dishonesty, stubbornness and intellectual laziness are accomodated by a culture it's only natural for internal disputes to display all those ugly attributes.

In this particular dust up Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon is accused of "stealing" from lesser known bloggers. According to her critics (currently centered around Feministe) Amanda is stubborn and marked by a persecution complex, unwilling to admit to the slightest wrongdoing. According to Amanda her detractors are engaged in substance-free attacks on her character. Both of these accusations are true to some degree. Why wouldn't they be? In the Feminist blogosphere substance-free attacks are commonplace and Amanda herself has always been defensive and stubborn.

Amanda is Amanda is Amanda

I should note that I generally like Amanda's writing and Pandagon is in my links on the right.

I first came across Amanda in the Salon piece Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign. In the piece and in subsequent blog postings and comments Amanda refused to acknowledge that posting inflammatory pieces on her personal blog while working for the Edwards' campaign was poor judgement. Her persecution complex was in full display here, yet the reaction from the Feminist blogosphere was almost total and universal support.

Amanda was one of the bloggers fueling the Duke rape case frenzy. Although the Duke lacrosse players were exonerated Amanda, along with much of the Feminist blogosphere, refused to admit any error whatsoever. Many doubled-down, claiming that the lacrosse players simply had to be guilty by virtue of being white young males of privilege. This stubborn refusal to give an inch was a black-eye on the credibility of Feminist bloggers, but within the Feminist blogosphere Amanda was again applauded for her stubbornness.

Those same supporters are now shocked and outraged over her refusal to give an inch to them.

Outrage Culture Can't Be Switched Off

For her part Amanda complains that her detractors are unreasonable, vicious and outright fabricators but Amanda should expect no less.

Many of the commenters attacking Amanda rely on intellectually lazy sloganeering: "it's not about you" and "your privilege is showing." There's no retort to these claims because the claims themselves are devoid of real meaning. These same slogans are regularly employed against "white dudes" and "Nice Guys" with no objection from Amanda or anyone else in the Feminist blogosphere. It's only now that these catchphrases are turned against Amanda that she sees how vapid they are.

Amanda's detractors continue to make baseless claims, including claims that are provably false. Amanda complains but she is well aware that at Feministe baseless claims are considered acceptable. I've been called a "McCain voter" and "a rapist" by Feministe commenters, and while I'm many things I'm neither of those. Evidenceless accusations have rarely bothered Amanda when the enemy was men's rights activists or right-wingers; it's only now that she is the enemy that she objects to meritless character assassination.

Does This Look Familiar to Anyone Else?

Yes, I'm going there. The shoe fits.

1. A person is accused of something awful and subjected to vicious personal attacks.
2. That person responds with "prove it."
3. The accusers claim that having to prove it unfairly puts the onus on the victimized minority.
4. The accused conclusively proves their innocence.
5. The accusers don't apologize. Instead they argue that because the accused is a white privileged person they must be guilty of...something.
6. And finally they claim that it was never about this specific incident anyway, it was always about the power dynamic between white privileged people and women of color, and anyone harping on this specific incident is guilty of missing the big picture.

I could swear I've seen this before.

The Moral of Our Story

A culture that turns a blind eye towards distortion and dishonesty can not be switched off and will on occasion turn inwards. The stubbornness that Amanda is being bashed for is the exact same stubbornness she's been praised for in the past. The empty reactionary rhetoric that she find herself the target of is the same rhetoric her former allies have always relied on.

A recent popular mocking phrase on blogs is "it's OK if I do it." What we see here is "it's OK if I do it to you." When "you" is "white dudes" or "typical progressives" or MRAs or Republicans it's OK, but now Amanda and her detractors are set against each other and cry bloody murder at tactics they've previously revelled in. Turns out being the "you" isn't as much fun as being the "I."

Blog commenter Pinko Punko, addressing the split between Obama and Clinton Feminist camps, hits the nail right on head:

If we have previously overestimated certain individuals ability to emotionally divest themselves from particular topics, we have no one but ourselves to blame, because back when they were preaching to the choir using similar emotional and incendiary language we all sang in tune. Funny how when we now don’t agree the same tune seems so harsh to our delicate ears.

What This Post is Not About

Sadly I must add disclaimers. This post is not about any of the following things:

That women are stupid.
That feminists are stupid.
That Amanda Marcotte and the people at Feministe are stupid.
That men's rights activists, Republicans, "white dudes", "typical progressives" and Duke Lacrosse players are either awesome or terrible.
That there is some sort of direct moral equivalence between Amanda and the Duke Lacrosse players.
That dishonest rhetoric is monopolized by anyone mentioned in this post.
That anyone mentioned anywhere in this post is getting what they deserve or not getting it.

I could write a very similar post about the clash between Obama and Hillary supporting Democrats, or about the clash between various factions of Republicans split across Ron Paul or John McCain lines, or about the clash between left and right leaning libertarians. The Feminist blogosphere is merely a good example of a behavior that is hardly unique. Online communities encouraging lazy reactionary thinking are commonplace, as are the inevitable blowups when the firing squad turns circular.

Even More Equivocating

In fairness to Amanda being stubborn is hardly a rare failing and not a particularly serious one. (I myself am stubborn to a fault) And in fairness to Feministe commenters it only takes a few bad and overly enthused apples to ruin the bunch. In all these eruptions the same small set of names keeps showing up.

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We Don't Drink the Kool-Aid Here

Critical thinking is a foreign notion to some people, especially when it comes to analyzing their own viewpoints. Here at Common Nonsense we believe that all views should be subject to critical analysis, including and especially our own. We believe that the means to an end are important, and that a poor argument in our favor is still a poor argument.

Some people disagree. From FreeRepublic.com:

Did the weakest Dem candidate for the general election won tonight? I think so.

By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.

Hussein’s exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope.

I think we as Republicans should be celebrating tonight at the coronation of Hussein, in whose presence millions of Democrat women, from elementary school teachers to journalism majors to law school grads to dykes on bikes will go weak in their knees.

As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.

How can anyone write read or write this dreck without being painfully embarrassed? First it is the too-common wishful-thinking everything-is-good-for-us variety of conservative "analysis" -- no doubt if Clinton had won a similar piece would have been written about her. Second and more importantly it's just plain stupid. Kwanzaa Socialism? Hussein Osama? Jihadi brethren? It's one empty rhetorical jab after another, cotton-candy writing at its finest.

Were I a conservative who disliked Obama I would still feel compelled to point out that the piece is poor, that "Kwanzaa Socialism" is an invention and that his name is Obama with a 'b'. The readers of FreeRepublic have no such objections. (Read the comments yourself) They agree with the general point, "grr Obama bad!", and that's good enough for them. There are no other standards in play, including basic accuracy.

Not content to let FreeRepublic monopolize stupidity for a moment RedState.com gets in on the act.

The bad news: our liberal “friends” – you know, the ones who believe so strongly in free speech and open debate – have done what they can to prevent us from making these improvements, so that our influence will be minimized just as we head into the 2008 presidential primary season.

No, our Blue State buddies haven’t succeeded in stopping us from improving our website. But they’ve made it more difficult and more expensive – which is why I’m coming to you for help.

Let me explain …

You see, when we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.

If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

This from people who fetishize self-reliance. (I left out the part where they beg for money) Liberals may pretend to be for free speech but since they aren't doing charity work for RedState clearly that's merely pretense. Follow the logic, if you can.

It's so absurd it's impossible to satirize. Even their own technical incompetence is somehow the fault of liberals.

Again an honest person who reads RedState should still feel compelled to point out how incredibly stupid this is, how it goes against the RedState disgust with handouts and opposition to victimhood. But again most RedStaters have no problem with it. To them there is no bad way to blame a liberal.

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Crappy writing does not deserve a free pass based on ideology. Common Nonsense is not a liberal or Democratic blog. It's not about our team winning. Our team is the truth as we best understand it and policies derived from factual analysis.

We reject the notion that what you can be sloppy or deceiving in service to a greater good, one of the hallmark concepts of the Bush Administration. Accuracy and precision are themselves greater goods. The process of deriving conclusions matters more than the conclusions themselves.

Places like RedState and FreeRepublic do not attract people who like to think, they attract people who like to agree to a rigid ideology. That is not our goal. That is why we avoid in-group jargon, why we stick mostly to substantive complaints, why we make arguments based on primary-source material. We do not have to stretch the truth, outright invent, purposely misspell names or rely on cheap rhetorical tricks because unlike at FreeRepublic we don't have to. The simple facts are good enough.

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