Most of you are no doubt familiar with Tom Friedman's infamous "Suck on this" moment on the now-defunct Charlie Rose Show in May of 2003.
But but don't sleep on Rose leading Friedman off by confidently asserting, "Now that the war is over...":
At the time, this was the received wisdom of the Beltway Sages. For example, here is David Brooks writing for Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard in 2003, practically endzone dancing with delight because now that Bush had been proven unequivocally right about everything, boy howdy were those dirty hippies gonna finally get what's coming to them.
The Collapse of the Dream Palaces
Mass destruction of mistaken ideas.
APR 28, 2003
... Now that the war in Iraq is over, we'll find out how many people around the world are capable of facing unpleasant facts. For the events of recent months confirm that millions of human beings are living in dream palaces, to use Fouad Ajami's phrase. They are living with versions of reality that simply do not comport with the way things are. They circulate and recirculate conspiracy theories, myths, and allegations with little regard for whether or not these fantasies are true. And the events of the past month have exposed them as the falsehoods they are...
Finally, there is the dream palace of the American Bush haters. In this dream palace, there is so much contempt for Bush that none is left over for Saddam or for tyranny. Whatever the question, the answer is that Bush and his cronies are evil. What to do about Iraq? Bush is evil. What to do about the economy? Bush is venal. What to do about North Korea? Bush is a hypocrite.
In this dream palace, Bush, Cheney, and a junta of corporate oligarchs stole the presidential election, then declared war on Iraq to seize its oil and hand out the spoils to Halliburton and Bechtel. In this dream palace, the warmongering Likudniks in the administration sit around dreaming of conquests in Syria, Iran, and beyond. In this dream palace, the boy genius Karl Rove hatches schemes to use the Confederate flag issue to win more elections, John Ashcroft wages holy war on American liberties, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and his cabal of neoconservatives long for global empire. In this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed, and all the windows are shuttered with hate.
My third guess is that the Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink. Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their Gore Vidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over the Democratic party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. But they will seem increasingly unattractive to most moderate and even many normally Democratic voters who never really adopted outrage as their dominant public emotion.
In other words, there will be no magic "Aha!" moment that brings the dream palaces down. Even if Saddam's remains are found, even if weapons of mass destruction are displayed, even if Iraq starts to move along a winding, muddled path toward normalcy, no day will come when the enemies of this endeavor turn around and say, "We were wrong. Bush was right." They will just extend their forebodings into a more distant future. Nevertheless, the frame of the debate will shift. The war's opponents will lose self-confidence and vitality. And they will backtrack. They will claim that they always accepted certain realities, which, in fact, they rejected only months ago.
The magic of this piece of persiflage -- and all such super-patriot Salacious B. Crumb caterwauling...
...by all your favorite Neocon pundits back in the day -- is not merely that it got everything wrong, but that it got everything perfectly backwards.
It's the GOP base/Tea Party/MAGA meatheads that grew more vociferous. Even President Obama trying to clean up the ruin they left in their wake, and asking nothing more than everyone help out and meet in the middle did not dampen their anger, because as many people have noted, hatred of the Left (and all the usual fascist scapegoats) is all that is left of Right.
And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their MAGA rallies, their podcasts, their Hate Radio and their Fox News garbage. They will still have a huge influence over the Republican party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. But they will seem increasingly unattractive to sane, normal humans who never really adopted outrage as their dominant public emotion.
And there was never any magic "Aha!" moment that brought their Neocon dream palaces down. None of them ever missed a meal. Most of the got promotions and book deals. No matter how far Democrats extend themselves and offer compromise after compromise to repair the damage the GOP has done to this country, no day will come when Republican politicians, pundits and the base of the party turn around and say, "We were wrong. The Left was right." They will just extend their forebodings into a more distant future.
Nevertheless, the frame of the debate will shift. The Right's lies and conspiracy theories will get progressively stupider, as the ghouls and grifters who spread them get progressively richer. And they will backtrack, and reverse themselves again and again.
They will claim that they always accepted certain realities, which, in fact...
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