the article at the beginning of the thread operates at the usual tiny wattage of a national review op ed piece:
why would anyone on the left allow these people to frame the political situation, frame the understanding of that situation?
even if this "analysis" was at some remote level correct--which it is not--from premise to conclusion, there is no there there--these are the last people who are in a position to suggest anything constructive about the left---to the 49% of the americna population that the n.r.. would understand as "left" because they voted for kerry. i do not understand what purpose it serves to pretend that the national review is other than it is: a mediocre rightwing rag whose readership is consistent with its politics--so the first problem is that the article is not directed at "the left" it is not and cannot be addressed to "the left"--it is addressed to conservatives. you have to accept the articles frame of reference for it to be other than laughable, and that frame of reference is conservative.
it seems that the right-dominated medai apparatus--you know the one that serves a necessary function for conservatvies as a source of persecution---has taken to repeating the statement--which is nothing more than a statement--that the last election demonstrated some kin of "credibility problem" for the left. i assumed from the outset these claims meant nothing, and reading the article at the start of the thread changed nothing.
what credibility problemj, really?
the national review supports an administration that has, to name only the most obvious example, lied to a country about reasons for war, about the nature fo that war once under way----for example--what on earth puts any such magazine (or person) in a position to talk about credibility problems? how is credibility even an issue under the bush regime?
the question of "morality"--which of course conservatives like to pretend they alone and exlcusively define (perhaps with a little input from that voice in your head)--- i am not convinced that "the result" of the last election "proves" anything about the relative importance of this register of discourse in politics. of course the folk at the national review would think otherwsie, since developing such a language for rightwing ends has been their stock in trade for years. the main thing the article leqve out--at it is not in the least surpriring that it would do this--is the way in which the bush administration instrumentalized its "war on terror"--from the sliding color paranoia index, to the incessant declarations about "threats of attack" ad mauseum--which is at the discursive level far more important than christian funamentalist terminology in general, this ludicrous discourse of "morality" in particular.
there is an interersting political fight ongoing about the dominant discourse: the national review is not analyzing it---it is a participant in it
why should anyone take seriously an analysis of the last election that says nothing at all about the ways conservatvie christians have organized into a kind of rightwing machine politics? that's right, this is not an analysis....
the point about "islamophobia"
such argument as there is above comes down to "we're the national review. we're racists. we are proud of it." to justify what admits of no justification, you get the usual torrent of cliches. nothing interesting, nothing important in this argument--nothing new.
Quote:
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Reformers like Allawi and Yawar of Iraq are not ?puppets? but far better advocates of democratic reform than anyone else in the Arab world. Nor does ?no blood for oil? mean anything when an increasingly small percentage of American-imported petroleum comes from the Gulf, and when an oil-hungry China ? without much deference to liberal sensibilities ? is driving up the world price, eyeing every well it can for future exploitation without regard for political or environmental niceties.
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it seems like here, as in most places, the national review is just making stuff up.
it starts off with a tough sell--that allawi is not a puppet of the americands--hard to imagine anyone writing that without laughing--and them moves directly into neoconservative delerium. the author is not talking about the actually existing debacle in the actually existing iraq: he is simply channelling wolfowitz. nonsense, all of it.
the bit about the un is without substance or scale. it is, sadly, too typical of the kind of pseudo-analysis that passes for thinking in conservative circles---the apologia for racism, the hallucinations about iraq, the john birch society rant about the un--pretty sad stuff, folks.
and you imagine that credibility problems affect the Left?
look in a mirror.