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- Seeing the end of the United States' involvement in Iraq getting closer every day, it's time to start taking stock of the meaning of it all, and I'd say my position is, and always has been what Daniel Larison writes here. Reflecting on the early pieces of triumphalism (e.g. this Newsweek story), he asks why anyone would want to take credit for Iraq which has, among other things, led to the death or serious injury of thousands of Americans, the same for tens of thousands of Iraqis, mass displacement and regional chaos, and all for a war of aggression we chose to wage. And now we're supposed to look back on this and be proud of what we've done? We must truly be an exceptional people indeed.
- Ezra Klein reads a Mark Steyn article about health care in National Review and concludes that this sort of right-wing commentary talking about the government taking over one-sixth of the economy and so forth probably has something to do with the tenor of opposition on the right. Indeed, here's another incomprehensible Steyn post about Canadian transvestites, the decline of Scottish civilization and the Second Amendment, all in the context of American exceptionalism (seriously -- what the hell is this post about?). But this is a problem beyond Steyn or even National Review. What about this Wall Street Journal op-ed that relies on scary adjectives -- rather than any substance -- to allege that reconciliation is some sort of power-grab? Or this WorldNet Daily article about Barack Obama's secret plan to steal the 2012 election to stay in power indefinitely? How could any intellectually honest conservative possibly tolerate the sheer amount of B.S. being spewed by the conservative movement?
- A component of the decades-long Republican effort to identify government as "the problem," is to make it an accessory to sloth. The reason why loathsome criminals like Tom DeLay (why is his opinion being solicited?) can describe people accepting unemployment benefits as a drag on the economy is because he's relying on a long-standing narrative that views the poor and jobless as societal leeches rather than underdogs. But without the emotional (read: race anxiety) boost afforded from blaming "welfare queens," it's hard seeing this narrative having much of a future -- if Democrats had their own counter-narrative to tell. And that story starts with a government that actually produces social good, and does so this year.
- Weekend Remainders: Nobody could have predicted that Lindsey Graham's powers of persuasion would be ineffective at getting Republicans on board for closing Gitmo; Bart Stupak's demands don't just punish women, they punish poor women; the Democratic majority needs to get a little more creative than recycling empty proposals from the McCain '08 campaign; among the GOP's 2010 fundraising woes is the problem of insulting large donors; Chris Wallace thinks William Kristol is an "expert" on Iraq; be still my beating heart, another 8,000 words on Rahm Emanuel; and Sunday's Washington Post asks the serious questions, like whether the deceased 40th president would vote for the former governor of Alaska.
--Mori Dinauer
