:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 ::

Required Reading

Dave Neiwert of Orcinus has a post up explaining how the "Bush hater" meme espoused by the right is merely an ad hominem used to ignore reality-based criticism of the current administration.

Perhaps, when considering whether Bush's critics "objectively hurt the war effort," it's useful to run a simple test of logic. Namely, tell us which has hurt us more:

-- An administration that ignored serious and well-founded concerns about the legitimacy of the invasion and the planning for postwar reconstruction, as well as an exit strategy, and proceeded to commit our troops to what has proven an inextricable disaster, worsened by its own outrageous incompetence.

-- The critics who raised all those concerns in the first place.

Logic, however, is incapable of puncturing an ideological bubble like this, because its structure resists it: Even good logic can be ignored because anyone proferring it is by definition a Bush hater, a Bad Person with Bad Motives.

The reality, of course, is that the motives of the critic do not delegitimize his criticism. Moreover, it's clear that the motives of many of his critics originate not with "hatred" of Bush but at well-founded opposition to his policies.

Conservatives, in order to maintain the bubble, have even begun constructing an agenda predicated on the mythology that there is no legitimacy to liberal or centrist criticism of Bush because it is constituted solely of "unhinged" Bush hatred -- even if the actual evidence for this charge is scant. So, of course, they drum up outlier incidents like the Colorado high-school teacher who ranted a lot of anti-Bush nonsense before his classroom, as though it represented the mainstream of opposition to the Bush agenda.

As always with David's stuff, one really has to read the whole thing to get the full benefit of it. What should prove interesting in the next few months is how the right continues to react to the media sea-change allowing for at least airing criticism of Dear Leader - one can only hold out reality for so long.

:: The Squire 10:10 PM :: email this post :: ::
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