Right-Wing Bloggers: Still Lunatics

Lest my last post leave me open to charges of having a sectarian "only enemies on the left" attitude, I present a perfect encapsulation of deluded right-wing thought. "Winds of Change" used to be blog dedicated to reporting the "good news" from the occupation of Iraq. Since there isn't much in the way of good news, they gave up on that and decided to start denouncing people who reported the bad news. So they've been all up in the Scott Beauchamp flap, attempting to discredit the soldier who reported on abuses committed by his unit in Iraq.

But I don't want to write about that. Instead, I'd like to highlight a post by "Armed Liberal". He quotes something from former Army Ranger David Grossman, which he says "will perfectly explain my disgust with the Hollywood flood of 'damaged soldier' films, as well as the root of my disdain for the Scott Beauchamp / The Nation / Kos 'Killitary' meme that is echoing among our would-be intellectual betters this week." Observe:

The World War II generation was the "Greatest Generation" and today a new Greatest Generation is coming home. That is, if we do not screw them all up by telling them (and their families, their neighbors and their employers) that they are ticking time-bombs doomed to a lifetime of mental illness.

Here is what I believe is the heart of the matter. To harm and destroy people, you have to lie:

Lie Number 1: Ignore the vast majority who are just fine and report only on the minority with problems.

Lie Number 2: Fail to report that most PTSD cases are people with only 30, 40, or 50 pounds of PTSD, people who in previous wars would have gone undetected.

Lie Number 3: Fail to report that we are damned good at treating PTSD and that we are getting better at it every day.

Lie Number 4: fail to report that PTSD can be a step on the path to stress inoculation and that one can be stronger when they come out the other end.

OK, let me see if I can translate the "facts" which would be the corollaries of these "lies":

• Fact Number 1: Almost nobody gets PTSD
• Fact Number 2: All the people with PTSD aren't really suffering that much
  
• Fact Number 3: We know how to easily cure all the people with PTSD
• Fact Number 4: PTSD is good for you!
  

This takes us nicely up the ladder of wingnut reality-denial; it moves in a lawyerly way from denying the existence of the problem, to minimizing the extent of the problem, to minimizing the difficulty of solving the problem; to asserting that the problem is actually a solution. I think we could do this with any intractable bit of reality (global warming comes to mind); perhaps I'll try that at some later date.

I also like the reasoning about soldiers' mental states. On the one hand they are a new "greatest generation" of iron men and women who laugh in the face of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. On the other hand, they are fragile creatures who will collapse in terror if civilians tell them they might have PTSD.

So that's a genuinely insane and right wing line of "reasoning", far worse than the Euston Manifesto. But oh, wait--I can't resist a parting shot at the Decent Left. The reason I wrote about Norman Geras is that Winds of Change linked to his profile of Armed Liberal!

Norman Geras: Still an Idiot

There is no political position I find quite so irritating as the pro-war "decent left" types who produce things like the Euston Manifesto. There are, of course, many political positions which are more objectionable, but none that are so annoying. The Eustonites drive me nuts in the same way Bono does--self-righteousness and moral superiority combined with politically backwards and ignorant positions.

Prominent among this crowd has been Norman Geras, the onetime Marx scholar who now spends his days excoriating the left for being insufficiently eager to support U.S. wars against other countries. Against my better judgment, I found myself at his blog recently. A recent essay by Johann Hari had led me to believe that Geras had come off his ridiculous defense of the Iraq war; sadly, no. Geras still believes that he is morally superior to those who opposed the war: he concerned himself only with the noble goal of ending tyranny everywhere, while those evil war critics sold out their ideals by asking what the actual consequences of the invasion were likely to be:

I said that had I been able to foresee the scale of death and social breakdown the war was to bring I would not have supported it. I stand by this change of mind. But I am not ashamed that I supported the war; because the reasons why I did were compelling moral reasons, not disgraceful ones - reasons very much of the kind I believe Johann himself held at the time, reasons to do, precisely, with 'solidarity with suffering strangers'. When I recant on that is when I'll be ashamed of myself.

If you have "compelling moral reasons", then apparently you are relieved of any responsibility for being able to "foresee the scale of death and social breakdown" caused by policies you support, even when those consequences were foreseen by many, many people before the war started. Good to know. Politics is a lot easier when you are held responsible only for your intentions, not for your results.

It's funny that people like Geras are so fond of appealing to the enlightenment and "reason", because they lack one of the basic characteristics associated with rationality: the connection between means and ends. Their logic leading into the war went something like this: we are for overthrowing Saddam and bringing about democracy and liberty in Iraq; the only available means of overthrowing Saddam is a war led by George W. Bush; therefore we support the war. The fact that the means (W's war) seemed highly unlikely to bring about the desired end (democracy and liberty) was deemed irrelevant. Frankly, those apocalyptic Christians who support war in the Middle East because they think it will bring about the second coming of Christ strike me as a lot more rational than the Euston folks: if you accept their Biblical literalist premises, the whole thing is really quite logically coherent.

But there's no need for me to go on and dissect Geras's views about the war with analytical precision and hilarious ridicule, since Daniel Davies already did that. I'll just highlight another outrageous bit of self-satisfied sneering from Geras. From a post titled "Nobody Defends the Spanish Inquisition":

On the contrary, it seems that some do. I didn't know that, but should probably have assumed it, since however bad a reputation something may have there is usually someone to speak up for it. Anyway, this piece by Toby Green talks of people who feel the Spanish Inquisition has been 'scapegoated', and discusses political and religious 'influences' upon it.

You mean someone has the gall to suggest that the Spanish inquisition had influences? Political and religious ones, even? How indecent! Obviously Toby Green is an apologist for Papist terror. Next you'll be telling me that crime in America has socio-economic "influences", and that criminals are "scapegoated" for wider social problems. Oh, the moral midgetry of it all! Thank Voltaire that we have Norman Geras around to straighten out our moral compass.