Tuesday Open Thread

 

Chris Hedges has an interesting piece on the political power of genocide – after the fact – in a discussion of the Armenian genocide and the modern use of the Holocaust.

[T]hese questions circle back to the dangerous sanctification of any genocide, the belief that one ethnic group can represent goodness, solely because its members are the victims, and another evil because from its ranks come the thugs who carry out mass slaughter.  Once these demented killing machines begin their work the only thing unique is the method of murder.  The lesson of any genocide is not that one group of human beings is better than another, but that in the intoxication of the moment, gripped by the mass hypnosis of state propaganda and the lust for violence, we can all become killers.  All the victims must be heard.  None are unique.  And all of us have to be on guard lest we be seduced.  We carry within us—German, Jew, Armenian or Christian—dark and dangerous lusts that must be held in check.  I applaud the French.  I hope the French action pushes the Turks toward contrition and honesty.  But I do not wish for the Armenians to covet the Holocaust, to begin the process of sanctifying their own suffering.  When we sanctify ourselves we do so at the expense of others.

In the body of the piece, he writes of the need for Turkey to acknowledge, apologise for their own sake as well as for the Armenians.  And I have to think, as we blame the Iraqis for all that has passed across nearly 4 years since our invasion, who will make us apologise?  No one, I would suppose.

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aemd linked to this in the previous thread, Billmon on an aspect of the Republican … by now I have to call it their instinctive battle plan.

[N]o, what’s interesting is that the Rovians felt compelled to volley back on the sex stuff in a way they never have with more garden-variety corruption charges, like those raised in the Abramoff-related scandals. Clearly, something in their polling or focus group work has convinced them this is different and far more dangerous.

There are exceptions, of course — the Abramoff connnection appears to be sinking Conrad Burns out in Montana, for example — but one gets the distinct impression that graft, bribery and fraud no longer pack much of a political punch with the American electorate. I mean, if the scandals of the past few years (the pecuniary equivalent of projectile vomiting) have had so little effect that the Rovian brain trust doesn’t even think it has to hit back, it tells you something.

Likewise, if the voters only now are putting on a semi-serious anger over the lost war in Iraq — hands down the most deceptive, corrupt and wholly botched government enterprise since . . . well, Hurricane Katrina — you have to wonder what it takes to get a rise out of the American people. But of course we already know what it takes: something that will really get a rise out of them, if you follow me.  [snip]

In fairness, as I share aemd’s take –  and here is a snip of his/her thoughts on Nov 7 from the previous thread

[A]fter the Reed/Abramoff scam, well…the last straw. All the hate backfired, bigtime.

Is it enough to get a solid majority in the House and Senate? IMHO, no. A couple of things are working against the Dems. First is over a decade worth of high tech, balls to the wall, GOP fundin’ and work on their GOTV. While the Dems are playin’ catch up, the GOP is moving to the next level. Second is, well, ego, the final coup. In a year where the GOP is so down in the polls, what a final stroke for the Rove machine to come out on top. Talk about makin’ headlines! [snip]

… let me link to Tuston’s comment from the same thread.

A snip:

[M]y reasoning surely would be termed the CT over at daily cocks and cockettes, and I can’t claim to arrive at my answer through any identifiable and verefiable instrument other than my own native internal calculus of intuititive integration of what info I pick up.

I have to disagree that the press are “setting up” the democrats but I think we are getting a dose of hype that won’t be lived up to. (I’ll freely admit that I ay be having a pipe dream, though)

I’m going toss circumspection and caution to my overblown wind as well as abandon my obsession with the satanism of sarcasm and make my own serious prediction of 23 and 5 (hmm those are some familiar primes)  [snip]

Hope and cynicism… 😉  But no graphs.  Not today anyway… 

Killing a chicken at High Noon to read the entrails tho…

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UPDATE, 9:10 am

Not a graph… 😉 but a good read all the same from Who is IOZ [thanks to my emailer]

[S]mith doesn’t come right out and say it, but there’s a name for a political ideology based on a projected, utopian past that can only be reacquired through political acts whereby the cultural radicals are ousted and an imaginary old order restored: conservative.

Kos and his followers imagine themselves bolsheviks of Democratic liberalism, but their political ideology, such as it is, is deeply conservative. It serves up a unidentifiable, unspecified time of general well-being and social harmony, a status quo in which the only change that occured was “progress” in an exceedingly vague sense of a general improvement to the social and economic wellbeing of the society as a whole. It locates the rupture with that vision in certain political triumphs of its opponents, whom it accuses of revolutionarism. It dedicates its political actions to the recapture of such a past, which was taken away, and which must now be taken back. Things were better before, and once we go back, they’ll be better in the future again.

In that confusion of verb tenses you find the abject failure of the dreaming insurgents of the Democratic party.

Don’t miss the comment.  Love that ”grab” metaphor…  paucity of rhetoric on display.

As I read this I heard a very soft shoe debate with Conrad Burns in the run for ND senate….  I had to laugh, the Repub challenger (Grotberg was the name iirc) appeared to run against Burns’ vote for the war.  That pesky IWR the Dems would like to forget.

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