@ narciso:
What I wrote last year at this time was true to the best of my reckoning last year at this time. One of these days, maybe soon, I'll engage in public self-criticism to whatever degree of self-abasement seems appropriate. Shooting from the hip, I fault myself for extending the benefit of whatever doubts in her and the conservative movement's favor. When I've had a chance to look things over in detail, I'll try to be specific about whatever I may no longer believe or about what unrealistic expectations of mine may have been frustrated.
I hope it will be a thrilling exercise for all concerned.
I guess you find comfort in the thought, narc, that the reason Palin doesn't appeal to the left and the middle has a whole lot to do with this kind of thing - either the narrow subject of Trig's parentage, or the broader subject of her political enemies ganging up on her. In my view, the main reasons either has a lasting political impact is that Palin and her supporters have clung ever more bitterly and openly to their mutually supportive militantly defensive and conspiracist reaction. After the campaign Palin had a choice between de-polarizing and going right with a vengeance. The former would have taken a lot of work and tolerance for uncertainty and delayed gratification. She still would have faced fierce opposition and she still would have had trouble both referring to her personal biography constantly and at the same time declaring it off-limits to criticism. She chose the simpler but politically much narrower path.
@ narciso:
I am so shocked by the sheer shocking shock of these revelations that if my neighbor hadn't just now wandered by with a bucket of water and hurled it on my face, I might still be unconscious.
@ The Monster:
I don't believe it's accurate to say that Jones "spearheaded" the boycott campaign. His former organization Color of Change (Jones left it in 2007) began calling for the advertiser boycott well before Jones' resignation from the WH. From the outside, it looks like the boycott inspired Beck and his fans to intensify the attacks on Jones.
I have no idea what Jones' involvement in the boycott campaign was. I assume he was fully aware of it, but I also assume that he was smart enough not to want any direct role in it or even to want to be kept informed about it or have any input. Saying that he "spearheaded" it suggests a much larger role in it than I think he would even have been capable of playing - as though he had been speaking out against Beck publicly and so on either before Beck started attacking him, during the post-boycott escalation phase, or afterward as a way to get back at Beck. I can't find a place where Jones has publicly discussed the boycott.
The peace offering I referred to came, I believe, when Jones was accepting his NAACP Image Award in February. I can understand why Beck, considering what he thinks about Jones, how p-o'd he probably is about the boycott, and most of all considering how much time and energy he's devoted to trashing Jones, was so cold to Jones' statements.
@ narciso:
"Malicious" certainly describes your approach. I'd also add the words "blatantly" and "dishonest," and I'll remind you that this isn't the first time you've been caught making malicious statements without factual basis in connection to Rauf.
Stop defaming people. If you make a serious accusation about anyone, living or dead, I expect you to have some basis for it - even when, as in the case of Rauf's father, it's totally irrelevant to the discussion.
I don't care about your link, and I'm not in a mood to make your argument for you.
@ narciso:
Not half as relentless as you. I can't believe you're bringing up Anita Dunn and Ron Bloom - a couple of scary Maoists there. Have you ever met a real Maoist?
So Rauf’s father was a founder of the Moslem Brotherhood,
Do you EVER stop spreading misinformation about Rauf? The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928. Rauf's father was 11 at the time - a bit young to be a founder (even for a man said to have memorized the Qur'an by the age of 8). Pajamas and other web sites started spreading a ludicrously suggestive description of Rauf-pere. having been "a contemporary" of Hassan al-Banna. In the usual way, that seems to have been turned by your trusted sources into some version of blood brotherhood.
Rauf-fils has denied the claim that his father was even a member - I seem to recall something about the latter being in the Egyptian government when the MB was banned and being suppressed - and the senior Rauf's history wouldn't be typical for a Muslim Brotherhood recruit or activist. However, even if he was, even if he helped found the MB at the age of 11, even if Imam Rauf himself was MB, you still haven't explained why exactly that would be reason to reject the Park51/Cordoba House/GZ Mosque project.
"Book published by two known fronts" is more of this same garbage. I'm about 94.2% sure that the "known front" is going to turn out to be an organization that had financial or other ties or suspected or alleged ties to AQ or GI activists. That is not a "front" organization in classical parlance. What it is, is more of your defamatory/paranoid manipulation of language.
I used to know honest-to-god real-life front organizations for international revolutionary organizations. Guess what! They published and distributed a wide range of books, many by authors that didn't known them, and would have run fast in the other direction if they did.
My point is that Mr. Jones is now claiming that context is everything, but that’s never been the standard before. It’s always been a gotcha game. Had he risen to the defense of, say, Senator Lott, rather than someone on his side politically, I might be more disposed to see his call for cool as genuine. As it is, I see him selectively demanding we apply one standard to his side, and another when our oxen are to be gored.
I see Jones as striving to make a larger point than that actually - not just that context is important, a standard which would apply to Sherrod and others (and which I consider fundamental), but which would not offer much of a defense either for the crime he cops to (vulgarly attacking Republicans) or for the crime he denies (Trutherism).
He seems to be arguing that we should accept human complexity, and not seek to reduce everyone to his or her worst moment or presumed mistake - if that's an appeal to context, it's an appeal to context by a very broad defintion.
If he put in a word for Trent Lott now, I doubt that it would have helped his argument with the right. He did make an effusive peace offering to Glenn Beck, and I don't recall Glenn Beck acting at all impressed by it - this was back when I was watching Beck more often than I do now. If Jones had put in a word for Trent Lott back then, when Lott got in trouble, I don't think anyone would have noticed.
Anyway, my main interest isn't in Van Jones. My main interest at present is tracking and critiquing American conservatism ca. 2010. I don't see "but they did it first" as an argument for conservatism, or an excuse for dishonorable and self-destructive/self-deforming conduct.
Also, sorry that the Frog went low on your co-blogger. He probably felt he was titting your tats too, like everyone else everywhere (another E3!).
@ narciso:
I wouldn't support any attempt to replace one set of stupid falsehoods with another set of stupid falsehoods. In the process of negating the second set, one sometimes discovers the elements of truth in the original set. Them's the breaks.
And I really don't know what the time-line you produce is supposed to prove to anyone who isn't already convinced, other than that Doug Ross has a lot of time on his hands and thinks that someone thinks that it would matter very much if some/any O-care protestors screamed particular bigoted epithets.
@ fuster:
He claims that his name was included on the petition without his permission - that there was no physical or even intentional act of signing. Either way, whether he should have resigned or not, whether he's lying or not, it's still irresponsible to call him a "9/11 Truther." Even if he was that - unproven - he's not that now, clearly.
@ fuster:
Nonsense yourself: What you describe is sooner or later talking to those with whom one is not to talk. What you are further describing is a dialogue/transformation strategy implemented by force: Our message is "you must change your messaging," and, until you do so, we will continue to kill you. It is a form of "talking to," but what it isn't is moral, sustainable, or desirable. Luckily enough, it's also not the strategy that either we or the Israelis are currently employing. Instead, we are hoping that through pressure and impairment of some Hamas/Palestinian goals (a better life, security, etc.), we can induce Hamas to give in on other Hamas/Palestinian goals. It's a repetition of the strategy used with the PLO, that includes increasing the value of an intrinsically valueless determination - "revision of the charter." Eventually, we and the Israelis got the PLO to ambiguate its position sufficiently for the Israelis to "talk to" the PLO - though first we had to engage in a long process of secret, unofficial, intermediated dialogue and contact until finally we and the Israelis could admit that we and the Israelis were and had been talking with those with whom talking amounted to treason, with those who deserved annihilation only.
CK MacLeod wrote:
Or you can stick to the simple-minded language of annihilation
yes, you can, quite legitimately. it’s a suitable reply to people speaking that language.
Actually, it's not. The "language of annihilation" always relies on an error, because you cannot speak to someone who does not exist and who is not going to continue to exist. One inevitable result of that problem is that we already do "talk to Hamas." We already do "negotiate with terrorists." And Hamas already talks to and negotiates with Israel, Israelis, and everyone else.
The only alternative would be positive action really to annihilate Hamas, which, under current and foreseeable circumstances would be action to annihilate several hundred thousand (at least) human beings. Every other real world alternative to genocide will involve dialogue or transformation rather than annihilation. And that's also one reason why creating a broad category in which we lump both AQ (a network of volunteer killers) and Hamas (a political organization with active constituency), but leave off people we're working on or with, is arguably a mistake.
@ fuster:
Are you saying that you don't believe his story or are you saying that he/they should have known about his presence on the list? My point is that even if he had signed the petition (is lying about what took place), there'd still be no justification to refer to him as a (reduce him to) "9/11 Truther." Once upon a time signing a petition doesn't transform you into that. Now that he has fully, explicitly, very publicly, and repeatedly denied being or ever having been a 9/11 Truther, to persist in calling him one is to play judge, jury, and executioner and furthermore to indulge in a kind of fantasy-conspiracism - in which someone who has no demonstrable public record on a public issue and publicly denies the validity of that issue can somehow be advancing that public issue publicly. Even most real 9/11 Truthers would hesitate to indulge in that level of absurdity.
Think Progress was putting forth the story they got from Carson, ‘a legend’ as it were, almost immediately despite there was no evidence
of same.
That doesn't qualify as specific. You apparently want me to go figure out what it is you have a problem with, and, then, why it's relevant to this discussion.
Now Alistair Crooke to use one notable example, might insist
that Hamas is predominantly a political organization, ‘but you may ask yourself, how did we get here’ what us this goal of said organization
That's a valid question. You might also ask yourself about differences between stated goals, actual goals, achievable goals, and more desirable or preferable goals, how they relate to each other, and different means by which one set of goals might be in reality substituted for the others.
Or you can stick to the simple-minded language of annihilation - terrorists who must be destroyed and never talked to, so irredeemably infectious that even those who merely wonder about not-destroying and possibly-talking must also be destroyed and never talked to, and so on - until, eventually, you're either the last person on Earth or, rather more likely, you're left behind by events you've made yourself incapable of comprehending.
You want us to admit a lie, fostered by the Journolist, and other outcroppings of the Sorosphere,
I'd like you to be specific so I can have some useful idea of what you're talking about, and so that an actual discussion is possible... narciso wrote:
deny the truth about those
who Imam Rauf associates and has been sponsored by, Perdana
is that combination of antiSemitic truther (Malathir) and hopeless
dupe (Caldicott),
I think there are valid questions about how meaningful those associations are as per an assessment of Rauf himself, but, as I have argued numerous times, why they should bear directly on the issue of the project has never been demonstrated. People who decline to agree with the designation of Hamas as a "terrorist organization," who are willing to work with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or with people given to arguably anti-Semitic and trutherist outbursts, or with pacifist-leftists, or who may even marry nieces of former imams of controversial mosques are also allowed to assemble freely and pursue other projects in the United State of America. People who support Sharia or interpretations of Sharia get to push as hard as they are able to win acceptance for their position. They can also build or refurbish buildings and invite the public to visit. Those are among the hallmarks of a "free society" worthy of a 1776-foot Freedom Tower.
@ narciso: @ Zoltan Newberry:
Incapable of dealing with the actual argument, go to the "meta-" level and attack the writer for even bringing it up. Like "nuff said" and refusing to click, a strategy for perpetually massaging your resentments and proceeding with unstinting hypocrisy - part of what was meant by the infamous "epistemic closure" contention: "Closed as we wanna be!"
I'm sure you must think you're making a relevant point, Mr. The Monster. Some version of "turnabout's fair play," perhaps (while setting aside the dissimilarities between those verbal incidents and the larger point Jones is striving to make)? Conservatives have earned the right to be idiots? What a great platform!
Plus I was snookered by Andrew Breitbart and Fox News.
@ narciso:
What I wrote last year at this time was true to the best of my reckoning last year at this time. One of these days, maybe soon, I'll engage in public self-criticism to whatever degree of self-abasement seems appropriate. Shooting from the hip, I fault myself for extending the benefit of whatever doubts in her and the conservative movement's favor. When I've had a chance to look things over in detail, I'll try to be specific about whatever I may no longer believe or about what unrealistic expectations of mine may have been frustrated.
I hope it will be a thrilling exercise for all concerned.
I guess you find comfort in the thought, narc, that the reason Palin doesn't appeal to the left and the middle has a whole lot to do with this kind of thing - either the narrow subject of Trig's parentage, or the broader subject of her political enemies ganging up on her. In my view, the main reasons either has a lasting political impact is that Palin and her supporters have clung ever more bitterly and openly to their mutually supportive militantly defensive and conspiracist reaction. After the campaign Palin had a choice between de-polarizing and going right with a vengeance. The former would have taken a lot of work and tolerance for uncertainty and delayed gratification. She still would have faced fierce opposition and she still would have had trouble both referring to her personal biography constantly and at the same time declaring it off-limits to criticism. She chose the simpler but politically much narrower path.
@ narciso:
I am so shocked by the sheer shocking shock of these revelations that if my neighbor hadn't just now wandered by with a bucket of water and hurled it on my face, I might still be unconscious.
@ The Monster:
I don't believe it's accurate to say that Jones "spearheaded" the boycott campaign. His former organization Color of Change (Jones left it in 2007) began calling for the advertiser boycott well before Jones' resignation from the WH. From the outside, it looks like the boycott inspired Beck and his fans to intensify the attacks on Jones.
I have no idea what Jones' involvement in the boycott campaign was. I assume he was fully aware of it, but I also assume that he was smart enough not to want any direct role in it or even to want to be kept informed about it or have any input. Saying that he "spearheaded" it suggests a much larger role in it than I think he would even have been capable of playing - as though he had been speaking out against Beck publicly and so on either before Beck started attacking him, during the post-boycott escalation phase, or afterward as a way to get back at Beck. I can't find a place where Jones has publicly discussed the boycott.
The peace offering I referred to came, I believe, when Jones was accepting his NAACP Image Award in February. I can understand why Beck, considering what he thinks about Jones, how p-o'd he probably is about the boycott, and most of all considering how much time and energy he's devoted to trashing Jones, was so cold to Jones' statements.
@ narciso:
"Malicious" certainly describes your approach. I'd also add the words "blatantly" and "dishonest," and I'll remind you that this isn't the first time you've been caught making malicious statements without factual basis in connection to Rauf.
Stop defaming people. If you make a serious accusation about anyone, living or dead, I expect you to have some basis for it - even when, as in the case of Rauf's father, it's totally irrelevant to the discussion.
I don't care about your link, and I'm not in a mood to make your argument for you.
@ narciso:
Not half as relentless as you. I can't believe you're bringing up Anita Dunn and Ron Bloom - a couple of scary Maoists there. Have you ever met a real Maoist?
narciso wrote:
Do you EVER stop spreading misinformation about Rauf? The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928. Rauf's father was 11 at the time - a bit young to be a founder (even for a man said to have memorized the Qur'an by the age of 8). Pajamas and other web sites started spreading a ludicrously suggestive description of Rauf-pere. having been "a contemporary" of Hassan al-Banna. In the usual way, that seems to have been turned by your trusted sources into some version of blood brotherhood.
Rauf-fils has denied the claim that his father was even a member - I seem to recall something about the latter being in the Egyptian government when the MB was banned and being suppressed - and the senior Rauf's history wouldn't be typical for a Muslim Brotherhood recruit or activist. However, even if he was, even if he helped found the MB at the age of 11, even if Imam Rauf himself was MB, you still haven't explained why exactly that would be reason to reject the Park51/Cordoba House/GZ Mosque project.
"Book published by two known fronts" is more of this same garbage. I'm about 94.2% sure that the "known front" is going to turn out to be an organization that had financial or other ties or suspected or alleged ties to AQ or GI activists. That is not a "front" organization in classical parlance. What it is, is more of your defamatory/paranoid manipulation of language.
I used to know honest-to-god real-life front organizations for international revolutionary organizations. Guess what! They published and distributed a wide range of books, many by authors that didn't known them, and would have run fast in the other direction if they did.
And, one more time: So what?
The Monster wrote:
I see Jones as striving to make a larger point than that actually - not just that context is important, a standard which would apply to Sherrod and others (and which I consider fundamental), but which would not offer much of a defense either for the crime he cops to (vulgarly attacking Republicans) or for the crime he denies (Trutherism).
He seems to be arguing that we should accept human complexity, and not seek to reduce everyone to his or her worst moment or presumed mistake - if that's an appeal to context, it's an appeal to context by a very broad defintion.
If he put in a word for Trent Lott now, I doubt that it would have helped his argument with the right. He did make an effusive peace offering to Glenn Beck, and I don't recall Glenn Beck acting at all impressed by it - this was back when I was watching Beck more often than I do now. If Jones had put in a word for Trent Lott back then, when Lott got in trouble, I don't think anyone would have noticed.
Anyway, my main interest isn't in Van Jones. My main interest at present is tracking and critiquing American conservatism ca. 2010. I don't see "but they did it first" as an argument for conservatism, or an excuse for dishonorable and self-destructive/self-deforming conduct.
Also, sorry that the Frog went low on your co-blogger. He probably felt he was titting your tats too, like everyone else everywhere (another E3!).
@ narciso:
I wouldn't support any attempt to replace one set of stupid falsehoods with another set of stupid falsehoods. In the process of negating the second set, one sometimes discovers the elements of truth in the original set. Them's the breaks.
And I really don't know what the time-line you produce is supposed to prove to anyone who isn't already convinced, other than that Doug Ross has a lot of time on his hands and thinks that someone thinks that it would matter very much if some/any O-care protestors screamed particular bigoted epithets.
@ fuster:
ach... fine... does that mean you think he's probably lying? What's your basis for that? And what's the diff?
@ fuster:
Read whachu said. Not sure why you said it. Or for that matter what makes you so sure he's lying.
@ fuster:
He claims that his name was included on the petition without his permission - that there was no physical or even intentional act of signing. Either way, whether he should have resigned or not, whether he's lying or not, it's still irresponsible to call him a "9/11 Truther." Even if he was that - unproven - he's not that now, clearly.
@ fuster:
Nonsense yourself: What you describe is sooner or later talking to those with whom one is not to talk. What you are further describing is a dialogue/transformation strategy implemented by force: Our message is "you must change your messaging," and, until you do so, we will continue to kill you. It is a form of "talking to," but what it isn't is moral, sustainable, or desirable. Luckily enough, it's also not the strategy that either we or the Israelis are currently employing. Instead, we are hoping that through pressure and impairment of some Hamas/Palestinian goals (a better life, security, etc.), we can induce Hamas to give in on other Hamas/Palestinian goals. It's a repetition of the strategy used with the PLO, that includes increasing the value of an intrinsically valueless determination - "revision of the charter." Eventually, we and the Israelis got the PLO to ambiguate its position sufficiently for the Israelis to "talk to" the PLO - though first we had to engage in a long process of secret, unofficial, intermediated dialogue and contact until finally we and the Israelis could admit that we and the Israelis were and had been talking with those with whom talking amounted to treason, with those who deserved annihilation only.
fuster wrote:
Actually, it's not. The "language of annihilation" always relies on an error, because you cannot speak to someone who does not exist and who is not going to continue to exist. One inevitable result of that problem is that we already do "talk to Hamas." We already do "negotiate with terrorists." And Hamas already talks to and negotiates with Israel, Israelis, and everyone else.
The only alternative would be positive action really to annihilate Hamas, which, under current and foreseeable circumstances would be action to annihilate several hundred thousand (at least) human beings. Every other real world alternative to genocide will involve dialogue or transformation rather than annihilation. And that's also one reason why creating a broad category in which we lump both AQ (a network of volunteer killers) and Hamas (a political organization with active constituency), but leave off people we're working on or with, is arguably a mistake.
@ fuster:
Are you saying that you don't believe his story or are you saying that he/they should have known about his presence on the list? My point is that even if he had signed the petition (is lying about what took place), there'd still be no justification to refer to him as a (reduce him to) "9/11 Truther." Once upon a time signing a petition doesn't transform you into that. Now that he has fully, explicitly, very publicly, and repeatedly denied being or ever having been a 9/11 Truther, to persist in calling him one is to play judge, jury, and executioner and furthermore to indulge in a kind of fantasy-conspiracism - in which someone who has no demonstrable public record on a public issue and publicly denies the validity of that issue can somehow be advancing that public issue publicly. Even most real 9/11 Truthers would hesitate to indulge in that level of absurdity.
narciso wrote:
That doesn't qualify as specific. You apparently want me to go figure out what it is you have a problem with, and, then, why it's relevant to this discussion.
That's a valid question. You might also ask yourself about differences between stated goals, actual goals, achievable goals, and more desirable or preferable goals, how they relate to each other, and different means by which one set of goals might be in reality substituted for the others.
Or you can stick to the simple-minded language of annihilation - terrorists who must be destroyed and never talked to, so irredeemably infectious that even those who merely wonder about not-destroying and possibly-talking must also be destroyed and never talked to, and so on - until, eventually, you're either the last person on Earth or, rather more likely, you're left behind by events you've made yourself incapable of comprehending.
narciso wrote:
I'd like you to be specific so I can have some useful idea of what you're talking about, and so that an actual discussion is possible...
narciso wrote:
I think there are valid questions about how meaningful those associations are as per an assessment of Rauf himself, but, as I have argued numerous times, why they should bear directly on the issue of the project has never been demonstrated. People who decline to agree with the designation of Hamas as a "terrorist organization," who are willing to work with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or with people given to arguably anti-Semitic and trutherist outbursts, or with pacifist-leftists, or who may even marry nieces of former imams of controversial mosques are also allowed to assemble freely and pursue other projects in the United State of America. People who support Sharia or interpretations of Sharia get to push as hard as they are able to win acceptance for their position. They can also build or refurbish buildings and invite the public to visit. Those are among the hallmarks of a "free society" worthy of a 1776-foot Freedom Tower.
@ fuster:
Ah - I now see you were drilling down to the "E!3 Gazette." Any idea what "E!3" means?
@ narciso:
@ Zoltan Newberry:
Incapable of dealing with the actual argument, go to the "meta-" level and attack the writer for even bringing it up. Like "nuff said" and refusing to click, a strategy for perpetually massaging your resentments and proceeding with unstinting hypocrisy - part of what was meant by the infamous "epistemic closure" contention: "Closed as we wanna be!"
@ fuster:
?
I'm sure you must think you're making a relevant point, Mr. The Monster. Some version of "turnabout's fair play," perhaps (while setting aside the dissimilarities between those verbal incidents and the larger point Jones is striving to make)? Conservatives have earned the right to be idiots? What a great platform!