In the end, the most revealing thing about Friedman’s column was his invocation of those wounded soldiers. This seemed a transparent effort to establish his own patriotism, and it captured the pandering tone of the entire piece. To forcefully expose the truly disturbing forces at work in America’s body politick would risk opening Friedman to charges of being partisan and ideological. While casting himself as a fearless truth-teller, he is in fact giving voice to the bland conventions of mainstream American journalism.
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Thomas Friedman, Jeffrey Toobin, Thomas Mann, and Morman Ornstein worship the same god: the State.
But Friedman's hymns are insufficiently worshipful of the correct disciples of Statism.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 11 Jul 2012 at 08:20 PM
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The Republican party has always been wicked, but not for the farcical reasons listed here.
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#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 11 Jul 2012 at 08:29 PM
This was a topic Thomas Frank took on a while ago:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703906204575027484210248038.html
Centrism is the philosophy of the rich man's and a red state's democrat. They do not believe in the radical nature of the republican party, they do not share all the social and cultural values, but they do not really believe in the historical values of their party either.
The rich, business world democrats believe in 'small government' and 'fiscal responsibility' values because these are to their economic advantage. The red state liberals believe in 'social conservative lite' and 'fiscal responsibility' because these are to their cultural advantage (and a bit of 'little government' positioning helps with the resource extraction, service, manufacturing industry donations). Centrists of all stripes love the benefits of military power and security (mainly for economic reasons) and protecting 'national interests' abroad. They weren't really against the excesses of the Bush administration (and they've continued to support many of them through the Obama administration) but they thought how the Bush Administration did things was crude, incompetent, and counter productive. Wrong is too strong a word.
With the advent of tv, journalism developed a celebrity culture. Therefore journalists and pundits became more media personalities and stars, traveling in the same circles as the rich they report on. Just as there are 'Davos Liberals' you have Davos Journalism which is branded as 'centrist' but is sympathetic to the the right, in spite of its crudeness, because of the benefits the business friendly, small government ideology bring them and their portfolios.
Centrists don't care about policy, they care about picking winning sides and milking political advantages for themselves.
And, unfortunately, because of the wealth behind it, it pays really well:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/robert-kuttner/americans-elect-third-party_b_1288110.html
Pete Peterson and Robert Rubin aren't going to fight for candidates like Elizabeth Warren and it shows when the DLC backs away from them, prefering blue dog losers, when it comes to elections. Centrist journalists nit pick and equate their standing on principles as akin to the republicans standing on Kenyan birth certificates and against Nazi Communist healthcare. "See? Both sides do it. There's radical elements on both sides."
The people who say these things at this point are not intelligent and/or principled people. They are either too stupid to percieve that one party has made their radical mainstream, too cynical by half to admit their mainstreaming of radical is serious, or too cynical by whole to publically admit the other side has gone radical, if not insane.
If you are saying these things now; after eight years of the Bush Administration with the worst terrorist attacks, prosecuted wars, disaster recoveries, and financial collapses occurring on their watch; after eight years of republicans tearing the country apart under Clinton, eight years of "all praise the mighty leader" under Bush, and near four years of going back to tearing the country apart under Obama; if you are still on the centrist script, you may have public authority, but you don't merit it. You're a joke, an awful joke that your rich sponsors are playing on the rest of us.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 12 Jul 2012 at 12:29 AM