Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 2

Friedman.


The ‘Stache Sez:

“Doan Truss Smart Peopleses!”


Instead of picking through the Mouse Circus dumpster in greater detail I chose to expend some time on one, specific column by Thomas L. Friedman entitled “Seeing Is Believing”, also from Sunday.

Sure it was partly as an excuse to recycle my spiffy artwork, and partly because the Fat Karl Show was such an entirely predictable trainwreck of Jello-pundit wankery and political snuff-porn that it was virtually unwatchable.

But mostly it is because this latest bucket of tepid eyewash from The Moustache of Understanding is, arguably, the purest distillation of his bankrupt ideology I have seen in a very, very long time.

Read these snips and see if you can spot the atrocities. (Only a little sip: more would make your tummy hurt.)

From the NYT, smuggled by friendlies though a hole in their rabbit-proof fence….

“Is the surge in Iraq working? That is the question that Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will answer for us next month. I, alas, am not interested in their opinions.

It is not because I don’t hold both men in very high regard. I do. But I’m still not interested in their opinions. I’m only interested in yours. Yes, you — the person reading this column. You know more than you think.

You see, I have a simple view about both Arab-Israeli peace-making and Iraqi surge-making, and it goes like this: Any Arab-Israeli peace overture that requires a Middle East expert to explain to you is not worth considering. It’s going nowhere.

Either a peace overture is so obvious and grabs you in the gut — Anwar Sadat’s trip to Israel — or it’s going nowhere. That is why the Saudi-Arab League peace overture is going nowhere. No emotional content. It was basically faxed to the Israeli people, and people don’t give up land for peace in a deal that comes over the fax.

Ditto with Iraqi surges. If it takes a Middle East expert to explain to you why it is working, it’s not working.

…

Because many Americans no longer believe anything President Bush says about Iraq, he has outsourced the assessment of the surge to the firm of Petraeus & Crocker. But this puts them in an impossible position. I admire their efforts, and those of their soldiers, to try to salvage something decent in Iraq, especially when you see who we are losing to …

Most likely the Bush team will say the surge is a “partial” success and needs more time. But that is like your contractor telling you that your home is almost finished — the bricks are up, but there’s no cement. Thanks a lot.

The Democrats should not fight Petraeus & Crocker over their answer. They should redefine the question. They should say: “My fellow Americans, ask yourselves this: What will convey to you, in your gut — without anyone interpreting it — that the surge is working and worth sustaining?”

…”

Truly “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters”, because in this last-ditch defense of his failed dogma, what Friedman has finally resorted to is nothing less than explicitly arguing for jettisoning the first and most important role of the journalist: explaining the complexities of an area of expertise to people untutored in the nuances of that field. And doing it in a way that is engaging, thoughtful, non-condescending and increases your audience’s understanding of the issue under discussion.

And in this absolutely textbook example of exactly how debased and dishonest the Centrist/Neocon mind becomes when confronted with facts its Prime Directives refuses to process, the New York Times’ Three-Time Pulitzer Prize Winning Foreign Affairs correspondent tosses that sacred obligation under the bus without a backwards glance.

So, what are the Pundit’s Prime Directives?

What are their “Three Laws of Verminotics”?

Law #1: The Center – as redrawn daily on the Holy Etch-A-Sketch by the Priests of High Broderism -- is Always Correct.

Law #2: Except where specific events which conflict with Law #1 are too overwhelming to be ignored any longer, the Iraqi War was generally a Good Idea promulgated by Honorable Men.

Law #3: The Pundit must always act to preserve his prerogatives and aura of inerrancy, and will therefore always find the shallowest, most narcissistic and self-deceptive means available to fulfill the requirements of the first two Laws.

Scan Friedman’s firmware and I guarantee you this is all you will find in there, running around and around in panicky, ever-diminishing circles.

And in the context of these three behavioral axioms, what Friedman is attempting here is at once despicable and predictable.

It is now incontestably true that, as Friedman points out, “many Americans no longer believe anything President Bush says about Iraq”.

And yet it is equally, incontestably true that Tom Friedman is congenitally unable to force his mouth the form the words “The Bushies were wrong, I was wrong…and the Dirty Fucking Hippies were Right.”

Because for Friedman, like so many of his overpaid, underclocked journalistic species, adherence to the Laws of Verminotics has actually mutated from mere programming into a ferocious strain of Idolatry. A Shiny God which demands daily sacrifices and away from which they dare not look for fear of seeing the Hell into which their own monstrous egos have led them.

And therefore to appease his God and obey his Law, Friedman must continually conjure out of thin air rhetorical formulations in which both sides are equally at fault for everything.

The Friedmaniverse simply has no place for those legions of people -- from Scott Ritter to Jay Garner to Al Gore to Howard Dean to General Eric Shinseki to Steve Gilliard – who got Iraq mostly right all along. And so, by the magic deliberate and glaring omission, Capt’n Obvious simply wishes those people all away into the Centrist cornfield and pretends they did not and do not exist.

And of course once the war’s original critics have been safely proclaimed non-persons in the eyes of the MSM, the terrifying concept that One Side was largely right, and the Other Side – Friedman’s side -- was simply lying-slandering-dead-fucking wrong, vanishes too.

Which frees the Moustache of Understanding to commit his second great atrocity: declaring Truthiness Triumphant…because there is no one left who can be trusted to tell you the Real Truth about Iraq.

The Middle East in a genuinely complex place, and the issues are difficult and nuanced. And, yes, there is much that is inherently unknowable and unpredictable about the exact trajectory of the van that the Bush Administration – ably assisted by people like Friedman – has driven off of the cliff.

But instead of a little humility and grace, he simply doubles down on the narcissism.

Shorter Friedman: Because I got Iraq wrong, everybody must have gotten Iraq wrong. And because everybody got Iraq wrong, it must therefore be fucking incomprehensible. And since I have declared it fucking incomprehensible, your only hope is to leap completely into the abyss and embrace irrationality. Drink aaaaall the Koolaid and do whatever the fuck your “gut” tells you to do, because ain’t nobody knows nuffin,

And so as Friedman hits bottom with this breathtakingly dishonest and almost cartoonishly anti-intellectual/elite-hating thesis statement – “Any Arab-Israeli peace overture that requires a Middle East expert to explain to you is not worth considering.” – consider how it would have played if, instead, he had dared to pen any of the following:

“Any ‘quantum mechanical’ thingie that requires a physics expert to explain to you is not worth considering.”

“Any ‘packet-switching’ thingie that requires a technology expert to explain to you is not worth considering.”

“Any kind of space exploration that requires a rocket scientist to explain to you is not worth considering.”

“Any brain surgery that requires a neurologist to explain it to you is not worth having.”

“Any old timey stuff that requires a historian to explain it to you is not worth considering.”

“Any discussion of flight that requires a pilot to explain it to you is not worth considering.”

“Any math that requires a mathematician to explain it to you is not worth considering.”

Had he dared assert this kind of “If it don’t fit on a bumper sticker it ain’t true” bullshit about any other field of complex endeavor, Friedman would have been laughed out of his job. But on this issue far too many of his fellow Big Media Pharisees also depend on the Great Lie of Centrism for their daily bread for any of them to dare to call him to account for this final, terrible betrayal.

And so, to protect his Shiny Centrist God, Friedman has at last stooped to pilfering Steven Colbert’s hysterically funny “Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.” schtick, chapter and verse.

Difference is, Capt’n Obvious is dead serious

End Part 2 or 2.