Saturday, February 01, 2003

The Bush Apocalypso

Here's a piece everyone should read, from The Progressive:

Bush's Messiah Complex

A picture emerges from the President's public statements--and even from such adulatory accounts as Bob Woodward's Bush at War and David Frum's The Right Man--of a President on a divine mission.

Call it messianic militarism.

He may have discarded the word "crusade," but it's a crusade that he's on. As former Bush speechwriter Frum puts it, "War has made him . . . a crusader after all."

While there's nothing wrong with a President trying to make the world a better place, when the man in the Oval Office feels divinely inspired to reshape the world through violent means, that's a scary prospect.


...

"Bush is very much into the apocalyptic and messianic thinking of militant Christian evangelicals," [Chip Berlet] says. "He seems to buy into the worldview that there is a giant struggle between good and evil culminating in a final confrontation. People with that kind of a worldview often take risks that are inappropriate and scary because they see it as carrying out God's will."

...

"What I hear is a holy trinity of militarism, masculinism, and messianic zeal," says Lee Quinby, professor of American Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. "It does follow the logic of apocalyptic thought, which has a religious base but is now secularized in the militaristic mode. Apocalyptic thought always has an element of instilling helplessness and promising victory in the face of that powerlessness. In this instance, Bush plays up the vulnerability we feel because of terrorism or Saddam Hussein and then accentuates the military as the assurance that our helplessness will be transformed." This kind of thinking, says Quinby, is "dangerous because it prepares a nation for war without thinking about the impact on civilians and on the U.S. soldiers."


...

This is way too much power to give to anyone, and George W. Bush has the arrogance that comes with such power. "I do not need to explain why I say things," he told Woodward. "That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

When his crusade goes terribly wrong, as it is likely to do, Bush will owe a lot of people an explanation.


I'm predicting he will refuse to give it. This is, after all, the "Who cares what you think?" president. And when pressed, he and his cohorts seem likely to resort to the kind of thuggery we saw in Florida, but probably amplified.

Speaking of gullibility ...

This isn't quite as bad as l'affaire Lott in terms of racial insensitivity, but it is a case of gross fraudulence on the part of the GOP. It deserves getting wide play.

The African American Republican Leadership Council represents conservatives' best efforts to attract black voters to their cause. (Of course, it's interesting how they frame this at their Web site -- not so much an appeal to black Americans to the virtues of the GOP, but this: "The mission and purpose of the African American Republican Leadership Council (AARLC) is to break the liberal democrat stranglehold over Black America.") It is hard to tell exactly to what extent the AARLC is an official adjunct of the GOP (the AARLC does not appear on the RNC's links page at its official Web site), but the connection at least to the Republican cause could not be more clear.

It's been observed previously (by Josh Marshall and Atrios) that the AARLC is not exactly a paragon of racial sensitivity, offering abject apologies for Lott ("It was lighthearted, it was humorous," was how political-affairs chief Kevin Martin described Lott's now-infamous remarks). Moreover, the AARLC's "Advisory Panel" is comprised mostly of conservative white males, some of whom (particularly Paul Weyrich) are notorious for promoting white nationalism.

In today's Washington Post, Gene Weingarten takes a hilarious look at the AARLC that's worth reading all on its own:

Below the Beltway

Amid the laughs, this tidbit stands out:

The honorary chairman of the panel is listed as former U.S. senator Edward W. Brooke III, a Republican from Massachusetts. So I called up Brooke, who confirmed the important fact that he is black.

Alas, he is not in any way associated with the group. He said he'd never heard of it and had no idea why his name was on the site.


In other words, someone in the Republican camp, in devising the GOP's outreach for black Americans, became so desperate to place a black person -- any black person -- at the head of this operation, that they chose a former senator and just plugged in his name. Without asking his permission to do so. Or even making him aware of the existence of their work. Assuming that Brooke would be a good "boy" and play along if anyone asked. And assuming that the public would not be any the wiser.

The cynicism is breathtaking. It's hard to tell for whom these Republican officials have less respect: Sen. Brooke, or the American public. In either case, they are being scammed.

This is precisely the same mindset that was at work when White House officials "leaked" to the Washington Post the tale that Condoleeza Rice had played a large role in Bush's decision to attack affirmative action at the University of Michigan. Of course, as noted earlier, it turned out that was a lie.

Just how stupid does the GOP think blacks are? How stupid does it think the rest of the public is? Pretty damned stupid, apparently.

Here's how Weingarten's piece concludes:

A mere week after I called Kevin and expressed my concerns that this Web site seemed, y'know, a little Uncle Tomish, suddenly the site was changed. Now, in addition to Bush and Reagan, there are also pictures of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. And there is an announcement that the AARLC salutes its new national director, a black Republican named Sherman Parker.

I reached Parker, 31, in Jefferson City, Mo., where he had just been sworn in as a first-term member of the Missouri House. He was a little surprised to find out that he was the new national director of the AARLC, because, he said, he hadn't agreed to take the job yet, and, in fact -- though he had spoken to the group about representing it -- he was still unfamiliar with its goals and had never seen the Web site.


[Credit, as always, goes to Atrios for spotting this.]

Friday, January 31, 2003

About gullibility

The story from Australia just below reminded me of the several years I spent examining conspiracy theories by way of doing background research for In God's Country. One of the things that makes this work so interesting is exploring the mechanism whereby people -- educated, seemingly well grounded, thoroughly decent and mostly intelligent people -- come to believe in demonstrable nonsense. [I'll be talking about this in greater detail in the series on fascism.] Sometimes it can happen on a large scale, as it is at Coogee Beach.

One of my favorite research finds is an essay by Nahum Z. Medalia and Otto N. Larsen from American Sociological Review in its April 1958 edition. It has the unwieldy academic title, "Diffusion and Belief in a Collective Delusion: The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic," but it makes in part for an amusing read:

Beginning March 23, 1954, Seattle newspapers carried intermittent reports of damage to automobile windshields in a city 80 miles to the north. Police suspected vandalism but were unable to gather proof. On the morning of April 14, newspapers reported windshield damage in a town about 65 miles from Seattle; that afternoon cars in a naval air station only 45 miles from the northern limits of the city were "peppered." On the same evening the first strike occurred in Seattle itself; between April 14 and 15, 242 persons telephoned the Seattle Police Department reporting damage to over 3,000 automobiles. Many of these calls came from parking lots, service stations, and so on. Most commonly, the damage reported to windshields consisted of pitting marks that grew into bubbles in the glass of about the size of a thumbnail.

On the evening of the 15th, the Mayor of Seattle declared the damage was no longer a police matter and made an emergency appeal to the Governor and to President Eisenhower for help. Many persons covered their windshield with floor mats or newspaper; others simply kept their automobiles garaged. Conjecture as to cause ranged from meteoric dust to sandflea eggs hatching in the glass, but centered on possible radioactive fallout from the Eniwetok H-bomb tests conducted earlier that year. In support of this view many drivers claimed that they found tiny, metallic-looking particles about the size of a pinhead on their car windows. Newspapers also mentioned the possibility that the concern with pitting might have sprung largely from mass hysteria: people looking at their windshields for the first time, instead of through them. On April 16, calls to police dropped from 242 to 46; 10 persons called the police on the 17th, but from the 18th on no more calls were received about the subject of the pitting.

... On June10th, the University of Washington Environmental Research Laboratory, assigned by the Governor in April to investigate the pitting, issued its report. This report, prepared by a chemist, stated that there was no evidence of pitting that could not be explained by ordinary road damage: "The number of pits increases with the age and mileage of the car." The puzzling little black particles found on many automobiles turned out under analysis to be cenospheres, formed by improper combustion of bituminous coal. According to the report, "Cenospheres are not new to Seattle. They have been observed in years past and they can be observed in cars in downtown Seattle today. They are incapable of pitting windshields by impact or otherwise." In its key passage the report concludes:

"Although there is a considerable body of testimony from reputable witnesses to the effect that windshields were pitted by some mysterious cause in the space of a few minutes or hours during the 'epidemic,' it has
not been possible to substantiate a single one of these statements by scientific observation. Actually, the observed facts tend to contradict such statements.

People bend reality to make it fit their fears. This was the same dynamic that was at work in Seattle 12 years before, when hysteria about Japanese-Americans swept the coast in the wake of Pearl Harbor, and led ultimately to internment camps.

News of the gulllible

Is this the Australian version of "moral clarity"?

The fathers, the sun and the holy post

Hundreds of believers flocked to the Coogee Beach headland yesterday to witness what they say is an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

Scores more hiked up the cliff path to touch, kiss and pray to the post which over the past few days has been transformed into something of a shrine, with pictures of the virgin, rosary beads and flowers piled around the white-washed fence.

Some wept, others sang, most prayed. As the sunlight reflected off a crook in the fence throughout the afternoon, hundreds claimed they could discern the shape of a veiled figure, and most agreed it was "Our Lady".


Well, it's nice to know that mass credulousness isn't just an American thing. Australians, they see the Mother of God in a fencepost. Americans, they see a President in a fencepost.

[Thanks to Mark at Pineappletown for the heads-up.]

Voices needed

Public comment invited on orca rescue strategy

I'll be posting more on this in the coming week. But the long and short of it is this: Puget Sound's orcas -- the only resident orca population in the lower 48 states -- are fast becoming seriously endangered. The Bush administration, via NMFS, is refusing to list them as endangered, despite the fact that they are the classic example of an "indicator species" (they reside atop the food chain in these waters). When I was first studying orcas about 10 years ago, we had about 98 members of the local population. We're now down to the mid-70s.

Here's more about it at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Pitch in if you can.

More anti-Americanism

Pretty soon the whole world is going to be in George Bush's doghouse ...

Mandela: U.S. wants holocaust

Former South African president Nelson Mandela has slammed the U.S. stance on Iraq, saying that "one power with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

Ouch!

Receiving applause for his comments, Mandela said Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are "undermining" past work of the United Nations.

"They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man?" said Mandela, referring to Kofi Annan, who is from Ghana.


Takedown! Ooof!

Of course, one can only imagine the president's bold and morally clear reaction to such criticism:

"Who cares what you think?"

Tailgunner Glenn

Reynolds' latest smear job:

Going to a march organized by Communists doesn't make you a Communist, any more than going to a march organized by Nazis makes you a Nazi.

But knowingly going to either one makes you icky.


If this is so, then, as I've previously pointed out, knowingly contributing your name and reputation to far-right, white nationalist anti-American theocrats like the Unification Church and its Washington Times makes you downright slimy.

That's how guilt by association works, Glenn.

Iraq and OKC

Via Roger Ailes, it's come to my attention that Frank Gaffney at the Washington Times continues to flog the (anti-Clinton) conspiracy theory that the Oklahoma City bombing was actually masterminded by Saddam Hussein, this time in the form of an almost pathetic editorial (it even gets the date of the bombing wrong) urging President Bush to make these theories the centerpiece of selling his war campaign against Iraq:

Bush's hour to shine

The case for implicating Saddam and his operatives in the latest and most deadly attack upon us is even more compelling, though, when added to evidence that points to his complicity in earlier terrorist acts — the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1996 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Tonight, sitting with the first lady, are two intrepid women who have done pioneering work ferreting out and calling attention to this evidence: an internationally recognized specialist on Iraq and best-selling author, Dr. Laurie Mylroie, and television-reporter-turned-independent investigator, Jayna Davis of Oklahoma City. I would ask you to join me in saluting them for pursuing leads that neither the federal government, prosecutors or the media have done enough to date to investigate.

Roger adds this:

Sorry, Frank. The empty chair had more credibility than you and those other two idiots combined.

Just for the record, I happen to have many good reasons to be skeptical about the government's official story in the Oklahoma City bombing, and happen to believe that some important revelations may yet come out of Terry Nichols' trial, depending on its outcome. See the story I did for Salon, "The mystery of John Doe 2" [Salon premium]

I happen to agree with Roger's assessment of Jayna Davis, though I don't necessarily agree with his view of Laurie Mylroie. The latter was for a long time a serious and well-respected Middle East analyst, and in fact was Bill Clinton's adviser on Iraq during his 1992 campaign. I thought her investigation of the Ramzi Yousef case was compelling enough to write this (though as I've mentioned previously, I've gone through a serious reassessment of that information since).

These theories, of course, were part of Tim McVeigh's trial. Mylroie did investigative work for McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, and it is from Jones' theories -- which he wrote about extensively in his book Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy (either Iraqi or Al Qaeda operatives are the "others unknown" of Jones' title) -- that Mylroie's and Davis' own renditions are spun. (Hm. Wonder why the Times doesn't lionize Jones along with the two women?)

The theory's basics are this: Terry Nichols' visits to the Philippines ostensibly to get a wife also included Al Qaeda training sessions in bombmaking, and in fact the entire OKC bombing was masterminded by Iraqi intelligence agents working through Al Qaeda in the islands. It then goes on to place great credibility in eyewitnesses who swore they saw swarthy Middle Easterners in downtown Oklahoma City in the vicinity of the bombing.

The cornerstone of the theory is the testimony of a Filipino government informant named Edwin Angeles. Angeles was the real thing -- in fact, he had achieved an unusually high official status in the Islamic radical group Abu Sayyaf, even though he had been hired to penetrate it. He was directly involved in a series of Abu Sayyaf terrorist acts that included some fatalities, but when he was caught, he immediately flipped -- basically saying to the cops, 'Hey, don't send me to jail -- I'm your guy!'

Angeles then went on to regale the police with the long saga of his time with Abu Sayyaf. Apparently the cops began intimating that he might face charges despite his informer status; it was at this point that Angeles began telling them about the American "farmer" who had attended Al Qaeda bombmaking sessions with none other than Ramzi Yousef in attendance. (Yousef, FWIW, figures prominently in Mylroie's exegesis; the cornerstone of her theories is that Yousef in fact is an Iraqi intelligence agent.)

Angeles' testimony was never corroborated. He was gunned down by unknown assassins as he left a mosque in 1998.

I investigated the potential of an Iraqi connection in the activities of the far right immediately after 9/11, and spent about six months pursuing leads. This was among the angles I pursued heavily.

I was forced to conclude that Angeles' testimony was unreliable -- he seemed to be inflating the story as he went along, and parts of his tale were later proven false -- and there was almost zero evidence beyond it. I interviewed Michael Tigar, Terry Nichols' first attorney, and he told me that he had spent thousands of dollars and many months having Nichols' activities in the Philippines investigated thoroughly. (A good defense attorney could use information like that to derail at least a death sentence, which eventually, you will recall, is what Tigar managed for his client.) He was absolutely adamant that there was nothing to the story -- that Nichols did not travel to the same areas, and was not in the country at the times that Angeles said he was there.

I did uncover only one actual case of the clear involvement of a far-right figure with Iraq: Fred Phelps, the pastor of the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, has made two trips to Iraq for the express purpose of denouncing America's 'sodomite policies.' Because Phelps operates under the cover of a church, it's hard to tell whether he went on Saddam's dime or not -- or whether, indeed, Westboro Baptist operates with healthy helpings from Saddam's largesse (as one of the church's local critics suspects).

Of course, you may also recall that Phelps was among the Americans who actually celebrated 9/11, declaring gleefully on his Web site, "The Rod of God hath smitten fag America!"

Finally, an important point to remember about this conspiracy theory: Even if it does prove true, it does not exonerate by any means either Tim McVeigh or Terry Nichols -- and by extension, the cause of white supremacy and white nationalism, the latter of which is a cause commonly featured on the pages of the Washington Times (and thus, one imagines, the motivating force behind its promotion of these theories). Indeed, implicating Iraq in OKC only casts white nationalists in a more treacherous and treasonous light.

Incidentally, this scenario is like a white-supremacist fantasy come true. Neo-Nazis and other violent supremacists have long wished that "real" terrorists (i.e., Al Qaeda) would take them seriously enough to form an alliance, but to the best knowledge of everyone who monitors the far right, this has never happened.

Thursday, January 30, 2003

It's a Newspeak kind of week

Via the Daily Howler, this story in the Washington Post was noteworthy:

Medicare P