Tag Archive 'cynicism'

Implications of the Pletka Purge

Lee on Dec 22 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Military Matters

Roland picks up an interesting piece by Jacob Heilbrunn for the National Interest, describing an ongoing purge of neoconservative intellectuals from the American Enterprise Institute, allegedly instigated by Vice President Danielle Pletka. So far Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht are gone, with Joshua Muravchik soon leaving. Others are said to be soon in following.

This could signal the reemergence of an old conflict over machtpolitik and just war doctrine, which used to exist in Republican security policy circles (ie, coercion-for-values vs. coercion-for-interests). If Pletka is indeed purging with intent, we may even expect AEI to shift its attitude toward the Middle East, Asia and Africa, given how much more amenable authoritarian regimes tend to be to interest pressure.

And the idealism of the AEI departed is considerable. Gerecht for instance wrote a fascinating but bizarre book I read in the late 1990s under the pen name Edward Shirley, in which he smuggled himself into Iran in the trunk of a car, essentially for the romance of it.

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A Separate Cause on Gitmo

Lee on Nov 17 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs

In commenting on Barack Obama’s renewed pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Con Coughlin observes that most of the assembled army of Al Qaeda jihadists currently confined there would likely be released for lack of evidence, if the United States mandated their transfer to the civilian court system for trial. He then wonders aloud:

There have already been suggestions that former Gitmo detainees have carried out terror attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq after being released from Gitmo. What if one of those released by President Obama then masterminded a repeat of the 9/11 attacks?
(Daily Telegraph)

For some of us, it is astonishing that there can be an assumption made by anyone that future terrorist attacks wouldn’t happen, should one precipitate the release of the Gitmo rogues gallery. The question before us would seem to be merely one of scale and target location. It is after all extremely implausible that upon their release, the detainees would suddenly and collectively renounce their violent religious war or its tactics, as an act of reciprocal beneficence.

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Bomb Philosophy

Lee on Sep 09 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web

9/11 Denial comedic interlude of the day. I’d say we’re approaching a existential moment with Andrew Kornkven and those of similar sentiment. One in which absolutely everything becomes a manufactured illusion to justify hidden purposes. A cynic might observe that it’s a pointless moment if so, given that in the end the bomb actually knows a purpose for its existence, whereas the “truthers” are very clearly still in search of one.

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Anti-Palin Hysteria Expands, Degenerates

Lee on Aug 31 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008

I’m beginning to sense that anti-Palin hysteria is building toward a collective psychological meltdown of truly epic proportions on the Democratic side of our political divide. Today, Democratic consultant Dan Conley angrily pushed us a little further to the brink of that by arguing that the selection of Palin by McCain was “cynical, undemocratic and frankly, unpatriotic.” Wow.

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Dissonance Control in Political Paranoia

Lee on Aug 03 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Glenn Greenwald's Carnival of Fisking, Lee's Page, Uncategorized

Bird watcher
(photo: companyink)

After writing about the Ronpaulist fear mongering of Jordan Page, and then reading Lance’s splendid post on the latest contheorist pandering of Glenn Greenwald, a common insight has reoccurred to me: the absurd amount of cognitive dissonance conditional to political paranoia.

This is something Christopher Hitchens explored quite adeptly last year at the “Four Horsemen” chat with his three fellow atheist luminaries, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris (, skip to 8:17). In a response to a point by Dennett, Hitchens argues that the stress of cognitive dissonance is the inevitable state deriving from belief in political unreality, and furthermore, that this condition exists and persists on purely survival grounds (seems true in miniature too).

I’d add that it’s the compartmentalism that political paranoia necessitates in an open society that is the most conspicuous betrayal of its essential cynicism. Something especially apparent when you run into it face to face.
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What Else Fascism?

Lee on Feb 16 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web

Keith Olbermann

There’s editorial sensationalism, and then there’s Keith Olbermann. Consider Mr. Olbermann on Bush recently: “If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. You’re a fascist! Get them to print you a T-shirt with fascist on it! What else is this but fascism?” Plutocracy, would perhaps be a better term for what he’s after. Or to be both frank and cynical about it, he just described government of almost every kind. Fascism worthy of the name would propose the seamless mutuality of nationalism and socialism, in the service of dictatorship. Collusion between big business and the state is generally incidental. And wherever it occurs, the role for business is entirely subordinate not reciprocal, as Keith would have you believe. Power is not for sharing under fascism. For too many people unfortunately, the word has taken on a entirely personal definition, meaning “that of which I disapprove.”

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