The betraying-Reagan thing…

Kennedy dispatched former Sen. John Tunney, a fellow Democrat from California, to seek face-to-face meetings between Kennedy and General Secretary Yuri Andropov. Tunney brought with him a memo on the tense relations between the U.S. and Soviets – with Kennedy siding unequivocally with the Soviets and blaming Reagan.

In a report by KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov, Kennedy is represented as suggesting “that in the interest of world peace, it would be useful and timely to take a few extra steps to counteract the militaristic policies of Ronald Reagan.”

…and the “heard any jokes lately?” thing.

One of Kennedy’s close friends, former editor of Newsweek and New York Times Magazine Ed Klein, tells the Diane Rehm Show that Chappaquiddick jokes were high up on the list (audio here, at 30:10):

I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

Jules Crittenden wonders (with a great deal of snark) if “you had to be there.” Mark Hemingway is aghast:

EXCUSE ME? If that’s true it makes Kennedy kind of a monster. The odd thing is that if you listen to the whole show, the tone of everyone involved is nauseatingly haigographic and reverential. Klein apparently let his guard down a bit; after he lets it slip Kennedy liked to joke about the woman he killed you can actually hear in his voice that he’s trying to backpedal. The show actually cuts to a break as he’s trying to explain himself, and I seriously wonder if it wasn’t the producers trying to do Klein a favor. But I’m sorry, there appears to be little to that could explain this. It goes way beyond “you had to be there.”

If the first thing is true, we’re talking about a traitor. Period, full stop.

If the second thing is true, he was a sociopath.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence anywhere to suggest a meaningful question with regard to either one.

Image credit to Tom McMahon, with a tip of the hat to Gerard.

The latest left-wing response to the whole David-Letterman-Joke-Problem thing is that Rush Limbaugh did something just as bad. He’s supposed to have called Chelsea Clinton a dog back in 1993, during her father’s first year in office as President.

Let’s just delay addressing the verity of that statement, for just a quick second. Instead, the brand of response is worthy of inspection because this is such a consistent thing with left-wing types. Every single argument, at the time it is dropped and we all go on to the next one, has to be left with the realization that left-wingers are morally superior. Every single one. No exceptions. No matter what awful thing you saw a lefty do, somewhere there was a right-winger who did something far worse…and the right-wingers lack the moral standing to make the same type of counterclaim.

My point is, if left-wing policies were sound — if they produced positive effects just once in awhile — it wouldn’t be necessary to spend so much energy sustaining this. As the twentieth century drew to a close, our left-wing President was enmeshed in a sex scandal and on that one occasion, the defense was a little bit different. It was: A public servant’s private life is separate from his performance in his public office. This, I think, actually made sense on some level. They were flocking to the editorial pages and the airwaves, to lecture us that this guy from our nation’s history was a complete ineffectual dimbulb even though he was faithful to his wife, and that other guy cheated on his wife constantly but without his service, our country never would have gotten past some crisis or another.

Here’s what’s funny. On no other general topic does this argument make more sense, than political correctness. Certainly, it makes a lot more sense there, than it does on the subject of the most powerful man in the world sticking his dick down the throat of a girl young enough to be his daughter. But the editorialists and the pundits and the talk show hosts and others with the “heavy voices” that carry so much influence with the rest of us, never seem to challenge the political correctness codebook with that challenge.

Perhaps it doesn’t happen, because it would make too much sense. Perhaps, if someone with a golden name and platinum reputation worth defending, lent that name and reputation to the idea that hey — you can be politically incorrect as all get-out, and still show some capacity for leaving the world, and your local responsibilities, in a state better than the way you found them — that would be the beginning of some kind of end. The one loose thread that undoes the whole sweater. Just a thought.

Now then. Is it accurate. Or did the liberals, in their embarrassment, their agitation, their eagerness to lash back, dredge up yet another false chestnut. How come it is that when conservatives complain about Letterman’s joke, they have some video to show us, and when liberals take up their righteous indignation about Rush Limbaugh and Chelsea Clinton, all they have is fourth-hand rumors and hearsay? Is that because Letterman engaged his hijinks just this last week but in Limbaugh’s case it was sixteen years ago?

Or has someone’s imagination been working overtime?

You be the judge.

I’m not terribly interested in the whole thing because to me, none of this is about personal character. There are decent liberals…I know of a few. There are scumbag liberals, and there are decent and scumbag conservatives. Unless you’re trying to assert that one side or another has a complete monopoly on this character issue, in one direction or another — which is ridiculous — what is the point?

No, to me, the point is the extreme lengths to which one must go, to make a bankrupt ideology look good. That, and this psychotic fixation some of our more prominent lefties have with Alaska’s eleventh Governor. That is the point.

So to me, the whole Limbaugh/Chelsea thing…even if I was open to the idea that liberals are inherently superior to conservatives morally…even if I believed every single word of Al Franken’s urban legend here, uncritically…would be, and is, a change in topic. I would have to hope there was an intent to deceive involved in bringing it up. The alternative explanation is that the liberals bringing it up, don’t realize how off-topic it is, because the whole point to the Letterman kerfuffle went whistling over their heads.

Update: Study in contrasts. Don Surber is, if I’m reading him right — I’m not certain about this — ready to accept the Rush/Chelsea/Dog legend uncritically:

And yes, Rush, love ya but there is no statute of limitations on such stupidity.

One has only to follow the link above to understand why I would consider that to be a little bit of a mistake.

Don Stott at Musket Balls brings us a video embed that captures Keith Olbermann’s take on it. Admittedly, it’s an apples-to-goofballs comparison to draw parallels between Surber and Olbermann…and I realize I already owe Don Surber an apology for it. But Olbermann’s argument is “Alright let’s get this straight, WE are the political-correct folks, those conservatives aren’t allowed to complain about any of this. Even if my side had any flaws. Which it doesn’t.”

This is part of that give-no-quarter, cede-no-territory, admit-no-wrongdoing strategy embraced by the left. Which I guess must ultimately work. But it sure looks silly when you watch it in operation, especially within its intended forum which is in competition with the other guys. Here’s Don Surber making something of a sincere effort to be consistent. He says, yeah, if Rush did the same thing, then that was wrong too. Olbermann’s point is logically absurd; it attacks itself. “It isn’t bad taste when we do it,” or, “It isn’t an unfair attack if it’s done to them.”

And that’s why I don’t think these people are going to be in power too long. The nation is hungry for leadership by grown-ups. I know it doesn’t look that way when a flim-flam man comes along and offers everyone free house payments, free groceries, free gas in the car, the world will love us and we’ll each get a unicorn — and the voters say “Heck yeah, we want this guy!” But I think everyone’s a little sick and tired of the team-team-team stuff. On both sides. The our-guys-can-do-no-wrong, those-other-guys-can-do-nothing-right stuff. I think the nation’s hungry for a discussion about which policies work. I’ve been hungry for that for a long time now, and I know back in November I was shown to be in a decided minority on that.

But since then…we’ve talked about everything else haven’t we? Michelle Obama’s fashion, Michelle Obama’s arms, Barack Obama’s apologies, Barack Obama is still awesome, stimulus plan we oh-so-much-hope works, executives paid too much money, Julia Roberts and Keith Olbermann still hate Republicans…et cetera…et cetera…et cetera…

I think Obama is a one-termer because I think in short order, significant numbers of people are going to be fatigued in the same way I am. It really doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.

BULLCUSE (v.)
1. To accuse a second party, usually in a grandiose and theatrical way, of deeds or thoughts that are actually quite out of harmony with the truth or the speaker’s perception of it. The purpose is ostensibly to uncover one or several hidden agendas and lay them bare, but in reality the purpose is to gain a tactical advantage in front of third parties. 2. More broadly, any act of accusing someone, which is blessed by a substantially greater quantity of bluster than genuine confidence. 3. To accuse someone of something based on feeling rather than thinking.

BULLCUSATION (n.)
A specialized ad hominem fallacy capable of jettisoning logic and reason from any debate, for the advantage of whatever party finds logic and reason to be injurious. An accusation designed to shift the focus of an argument, usually deployed when the speaker has been cornered by inconvenient facts. It is a rhetorical weapon designed put the offensive on the defensive and put the defensive on the offensive. Highly effective, although nearly certain to end any rational discussion.

The word is inspired by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bullcusing Rush Limbaugh of “calling our men and women in uniform who oppose the war in Iraq, and I quote, ‘phony soldiers’.” It is a bullcusation unless one is willing to suppose the Majority Leader actually thought, in his own beady-eyed little head, that Rush said something like this…which seems dubious at best. Senate Majority Leader Reid, therefore, accused Rush of saying something that Senate Majority Leader Reid, himself, knew Rush didn’t say. Senate Majority Leader Reid accused, for the purpose of deceiving others. Senate Majority Leader Reid bullcused.

It has been easier and easier to find examples of this, for the last several decades as information has flowed to more people more quickly. The still-exploding artform of performing in front of the cameras, has made the bullcusation a frequent occurrence.

Commenting on this over the weekend, I said…

…we have got to find a word for this someday. This thing liberals do. Where you come up with this accusation out of thin air, and you know the facts aren’t on your side so of course there will be a discussion about whether the accusasion is true or not — which it isn’t. Then, you see to it that instead of being pursued…the discussion is instead prolonged…since, if the discussion were pursued, it would be a very short discussion indeed.

The casual observer will assume the accusation has some merit to it, but that’s a secondary payoff. The primary reward is that there is something you don’t want discussed, and now you’ve generated a distraction from it.

The classic Vaudeville version of this is “When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?” For the uninitiated, the trick is that if you aren’t a wife-beater, there’s no correct way to answer the question. This is a close cousin to that. You come up with an argument which, plainly, has an inimicable relationship to truth and common sense — like — “we need twice as much money so let’s raise the tax rate twice as high.” I offer the counter-argument that plainly puts the kibosh on yours: “If you raise the tax rate significantly, people will change what they do to pursue their individual interests, and you won’t raise the revenue you expect to; this is basic economics and has proven to be an accurate prediction of human behavior, time and time again.” And you say, “you want the government to run out of money and you want poor people to suffer!”

It is an unfounded inference, one that enjoys no genuine confidence. You would not bet your life, your liberty, your treasured possessions on the axiom that I want the government to run out of money, or that I want poor people to suffer. But it’s an effective counterattack in the political realm, because now we’re going to have a long drawn-out discussion about whether I want the government to run out of money and the poor people to suffer. The genesis of the discourse has to do with whether supply-side economics works. It’s about the Laffer Curve. But with enough energized emotions at work…we’re not talking about that, are we? We’re talking about a sadistic streak I’m supposed to have, that nobody’s really going to bet anything worth keeping that I actually have.

That’s what we need to name, some day.

And that’s what a bullcusation is. A portmanteau between bullshit and accusation…and accusation that is full of bullshit. An accusation offered for the cosmetic purpose of uncovering truth, but in reality, for the purpose of covering up truth and making a red-herring about agendas, motives, character issues, and other junk that has no connection to what was discussed previously.

Do conservatives use this? Do they bullcuse someone when they “question his/my/their patriotism”? I guess that would depend on the situation at hand…it would depend on what inspired such an accusation. How comfortable would reality be with the juxtaposition between the accusation and whatever inspired it. Is it reasonable, for example, to doubt someone’s patriotic sentiments when he interlaces his fingers like a six-year-old brat that could use a good spanking, when it’s time to salute the flag…while he’s running for President? We’ll all just have to make up our own minds about that.

MOVE ON DOT REALITY (n.): (1) An instance or collection of cognitive product, used by left-wing people not to embrace reality as we know it, but rather to ingratiate themselves with each other socially. Such stuff has an occasional collision with truth in the same way a busted clock tells the correct time twice a day.

(2) The otherworldly plane of virtual existence in which one lives when one nurtures a habit of intellectually promoting, and/or fixating on, such stuff.

This is how the “Betray Us” ad backfired this week. That the people we call “progressive” nowadays systematically denounce any and all facts they find to be politically inconvenient, is old news to people like me who lack the dignity to avoid arguing with them on the innernets. To “normal” people who do a much better job of engaging their daily lives and staying away from “all that politics stuff,” it’s still a somewhat shocking revelation. You know…the clock-in, clock-out, go-home, rent-videos, play-video-games crowd.

The people who decide elections.

To them, it’s not so much news that The Left would trash Gen. Petraeus, or that The Left would decide to trash him based on the things he had to say. That, arguably, is what politics is all about. Someone says what you like, the job is to sell everybody on his impeccable credentials. He says something you don’t like, you find some scandals and play them up, never mind that the dirt you dig up pales in comparison to the dirt the other guys could dig up on you. That’s why it’s such a dirty business, and that’s why “mainstream” America wants to have so little to do with it.

Rather, the story is in how quickly The Left decided to do this. General Petraeus isn’t, let’s say, a Jack Abramoff or a Marc Foley or a Larry Craig, someone whose name has been twisting away in an unflattering limelight like an earthworm lacking the stamina and moisture to make it into the grass on a hot summer day, drying out in agony. We haven’t had any months-long inquest in the court of public opinion, about whether Petraeus is inappropriately beholden to the White House’s take on things in the theater under his command. It’s just a tad bit awkward to get such a debate going now just because it’s politically expedient to get such a debate going. “Main Street” can smell those kinds of shenanigans…even on it’s way to the ice cream stand or to the coffee shop.

But the real damage is in the wording. “Betray Us.” It seems SO clever, you know. Petraeus…Betray Us…it rhymes! That means you have to gimme credit for it! This problem arises with the salient question, posed by Main Street USA to the “Move On From Some Things, Dwell Irrationally On Other Things Dot Org” people: What exactly do you mean by “Us”? Do you mean the General means to betray us, as in the country, or by “us” do you mean YOU?

Main Street USA — not anti-left bloggers like me, who lack the dignity to extricate ourselves from the argument on a daily basis, and therefore are numerically insignificant, but the BIG America — saw that the General’s loyalty was being questioned, according to an oath he himself NEVER took. And this shocked them. They saw a bunch of phony political obligations being imposed upon him, and they came to realize they were next. In short, with this silly ad, heartland Americans realized exactly how The Hard Left works nowadays.

The Left pretends to be engaged in reality…they pretend to have a monopoly in this…and none of the things they do, once you list those things and start inspecting them closely, have anything to do with this. Anything at all. Our leftist comedians and pundits want to seize control over what we all think about things, even incredibly important issues like Iraq, so they can take this control and turn it over to someone else. They want to bully and intimidate and coerce us into thinking what they want us to think. They want to blackmail us into helping them. Helping them do…well, nobody’s really sure what. They themselves aren’t really sure.

It’s got something to do with rolling back tax cuts, not fighting any wars, repeating slander about our President and our soldiers, and then bellyaching about how none of the other countries like us.

But as the non-blogger world is slowly finding out, facts have nothing to do with any of this…because on the way to getting it all done, “facts” are reduced to things coming out of the mouths and pens of people considered “loyal,” and loyalty is attached only to people who are observed saying the right “facts.” That’s where this alternative reality comes in. This is where all this nonsensical crap comes in, to consume us if we let it. Where, in all of human history, fire has never once melted steel. Where global warming caused Hurricane Katrina. And the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota was Karl Rove’s fault.

It has nothing to do with what you saw happening, or what you can confirm happened, or what you’d bet some money, happened or might have happened. It’s got to do with what will make you some new friends, if you’re seen mumbling something to the effect you believe it, exhorting others to believe it, or both.

Having waded into the muck some time ago, I’ve known about this for awhile: Thinking through our most critical and crucial problems, to far too many among us — to the loudest among us — is purely a social exercise and has little to do with what’s real, even less to do with solving problems for anybody. Thanks to “Move On From Some Things, Dwell Irrationally On Other Things Dot Org” and their ill-conceived newspaper ad, now the rest of the country is coming around to realizing this too. People who are less aware of what’s going on than I am, because they have more dignity.

This country has some heap-big problems. We can debate some other time whether or not they ALL started with George W. Bush; there are a lot of reasons to question even that. But when we’re deciding who’s going to shoulder the unenviable burden of solving them, we’d better keep the grown-ups in charge, and leave the kiddies at the kiddie table where they belong. I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank “Move On From What We Tell You To Move On From Dot Org” for getting that message out. I could never have done it quite as effectively as they managed to, without even trying.