Jamelle Bouie reviews Markos Moulitsas' new book, American Taliban:
Like Liberal Fascism, American Taliban is another entry in the tired genre of "my political opponents are monsters." Indeed, Moulitsas begins the book with the Goldbergian declaration that "in their tactics and on the issues, our homegrown American Taliban are almost indistinguishable from the Afghan Taliban." And he fills the remaining 200-plus pages with similar accusations. In the chapter on power, Moulitsas writes that "the American Taliban seek a tyranny of the believers in which the popular will, the laws of the land, and all of secular society are surrendered to their clerics and ideologues." Which is, of course, why these American Taliban participate in the democratic system and hew to the outcomes of elections. Later in the chapter, Moulitsas argues that the right-wing hates democracy -- they "openly dream of their own regressive brand of religious dictatorship" -- loves war, fears sex, and openly despises women and gays. In the chapter on "war," Moulitsas calls Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota a "high priestess of the American Taliban" -- a veritable Mullah Omar, it seems! -- and in the final chapter on "truth," Moulitsas concludes by noting the foundational "kinship" between the two Talibans.
I think there's a big temptation for liberals to play the idiotic "you know who else liked sandwiches, Hitler!" game with conservatives, but it's a bit like trying to imitate Limbaugh-esque talk radio. There is, at base, some desire among the liberal masses to have the comfort of knowing that what they believe is based on accurate information. There is a large conservative audience that just doesn't care about accuracy as long as they're being told what they want to hear. You are not, for example, going to hear too many liberal commentators arguing that we're on the verge of a massive economic recovery. There is an actual divide between liberal activists and liberal journalists that, with some important exceptions, for the most part doesn't exist on the other side. Moulitsas, as Bouie notes, is writing this book for the former. But he can't expect the latter to give him a pass.
Obviously there are some liberals that want to see their ideological opponents as total monsters, but there simply aren't enough to sustain a mirror industry that makes a profit regularly churning out material drawing equivalences between conservatism and the most terrible atrocities in world history. I suspect this may have something to do with liberalism's association with rights movements -- whether we're talking about black folks, women, Latinos, or workers. Demonizing the other side as complete monsters feels a bit too familiar. For those folks inclined toward utilitarianism, Bouie makes a persuasive case that when it comes to winning elections, it really hasn't worked all that well. So why sell your soul?
