Megan McArdle is a goddamned idiot. She is literally comparing the decision to wage war in Iraq with the effort to pass a health care bill. Look at this shit:
People carrying guns [to presidential appearances] are acting like jerks. So are the liberals who have created a giant scary amalgam of a right-wing protester, who has done every bad thing that every protester has ever done. More than one person has now asked me how I can defend someone who shows up at a rally holding a gun in one hand and a picture of Obama-as-Hitler in the other, and starts screaming about death panels?
Moreover, having created this horrifying bogeyman, the next rhetorical move is to claim that this constitutes the whole of the opposition to your program.
Does any of this sound oddly familiar? Wait a second . . . it’ll come to you . . . yes, that’s right, it’s 2003 all over again! Coldplay’s on the radio, Elizabeth Smart is being reunited with her family, and the rest of America is trying to rip each other’s throats out, rhetorically speaking. The party in power is busy branding the opposition as something close to traitors because they are skeptical about a speculative venture that the majority just knows is going to turn out beautifully . . . Meanwhile, the opposition is staging increasingly freakish demonstrations, while the loud lunatic fringe starts looking for fascist jackboots and death squads behind every tree. The party labels have switched, but the vitriol, and the emotional tenor of the debate, seems very much the same. You’d think that the various players would have learned something from our last outing.
So, those anti-war protesters from 2003 who said there was no evidence that Hussein had a nuclear weapons program or that he had anything to do with 9/11 or that he posed an imminent threat, and that insisted that invading and occupying an Arab land was the exact opposite of the best way to keep this nation safe? They’re the exact mirror image of the lunatics who refuse to believe that Obama is a natural born citizen, compare him to Hitler, threaten violence, and believe some of the dumbest and crudest conspiracy theories on record?
And she gets paid to write this shit. If the Atlantic wants some decent content, I’m available. I’ll write for cheap and your readers will notice the difference between substance and buffoonery.
Boo:
Her old blog used to be janegalt.com(or was it .net .. I don’t remember) .. but you get the point .. she wishes she were Ayn Rand .. she’s marrying a guy who used to work for Dick Armey’s outfit .. and who’s now working for a Koch family(another right wing family) funded outfit .. you really should read her blog for a week .. you’ll wan to put your foot through your big screen TV by the end of the 2nd day
That was going to be my question: What’s her chosen persona — open defender of everything wingnut, or “but on the other hand”? I guess you answered it.
Still Boo’s question remains unanswered. Why would the Atlantic, the wannabe intellectual peer of Harper’s, stoop to printing this kind of obviously mindless and dishonest propaganda? It’s not about her political stance, it’s about the quality of her thought and writing. It’s not like she’s gonna get them any new subscribers among her fanchildren.
If you ever read her .. she does try the “but on the other hand” nonsense with comical results obviously .. but her political sense affects her quality of writing and vice versa
Nailed it, BooMan
…The party labels have switched, but the vitriol, and the emotional tenor of the debate, seems very much the same. …
Left unsaid is that the vitriol is still coming from the same people.
I can’t agree with you more.
I had an Atlantic subscription for nearly 30 years. I dropped it this year – one year shy of 30. It has become a foolish magazine and has some (not all certainly) foolish people writing foolish things.
It is sad. If The Atlantic had brought its earlier persona – the one it had until several years ago – into the internet age it would have greatly enhanced the online and, as it always had, the national conversation.
Now it just sucks.
I kind of drifted away from it some years ago because it seemed like it was more and more hammering away at the obvious instead of illuminating the subtle and difficult. Sounds like its recent trajectory has taken it to a final intellectual graveyard. Too bad indeed.
Has there been a recent editorial or corporate ownership change that explains the decline?
OMG. Truly unbelievable. I have nothing to say. T
I think that the mirror of today’s right wing protester is the Liberal Loonies who thought that Bush used cocaine, was a deserter from the Texas Air National Guard, believed that Bush and Cheney only governed to serve the people who voted for them, did want to have a beer with a dry drunk, thought that there were no weapons of mass destructions, didn’t want to put our troops in range if there were any and wore t-shirts that made profane puns on George (Bush + Dick) Cheney’s names.
believed that Bush and Cheney only governed to serve the people who voted for them
Except that Bush and Cheney did do exactly that
Luam — don’t know about the cocaine or national guard thing. But do you really think that Saddam had WMDs? The “loonies” were right on that one. As far as Bush and Cheney governing to serve the people who voted for them, you’re right. Many who voted for Bush were ill-served by him. He really served a tiny fraction of those voters. Remember his comment at a charity event — “this is my base, the haves and the have-mores.” That’s who he served, and he did very well by them.
Bad arguments. You fail on all 7 points. Charitably, you lose on 5 and win on 2 of them.
The two you could arguably win:
Now on to the arguments that the liberal loonies seem to win:
Your weak arguments prove these “liberal loonies” are eminently more sensible than their teabagger counterpart, and even more sensible than these moderate, false-equivalence concern trolls, and simply proves that, at most, the looney left is guilty of having potty mouths whilst being appropriately outraged at the lies and crimes of Bush, Cheney, and the right-wing.
Luam spent many days wearing a Bush+Dick=Fucked t-shirt during the Bush years. I think this was a somewhat failed effort at self-deprecation and snark.
I couldn’t tell if it was an irony attempt gone awry or not, so stayed out. But at least it elicited a comprehensive and useful rebuttal from Hawkguy.
Thanks. I wasn’t sure at first. Oh well, I got to respond to the snark at least.
A substantial trade imbalance persists although the opening of the Mozal aluminum smelter, the country’s largest foreign investment project to date, has increased export earnings. Mozambique’s once substantial foreign debt has been reduced through forgiveness and rescheduling under the IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Enhanced HIPC initiatives, and is now at a manageable level. In July 2007 the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) signed a Compact with Mozambique; the Compact entered into force in September 2008 and will continue for five years. Compact projects will focus on improving sanitation, roads, agriculture, and the business regulation environment cash advance in an effort to spur economic growth in the four northern provinces of the country.
Talk about seriously OT. Write a diary.
Just curious, fabooj: why would you give this obvious spam a 2? It’s a link to some loan scam outfit.
I thought I gave it a 0.
BooMan: They publish it so that people like you will write about it. Seriously. Many editors (including some I’ve worked for) could not care less how asinine the assertions in their pages are, so long as they provoke a reaction, any reaction. The Atlantic seems to have gone down the “if one article pisses off the right, and another pisses off the left, we’re balanced” path in the last couple years. (Oh, plus the latest 10,000 word war-gaming exercise from James Fallows, because he can.) It’d just be idiotic, except that in a lot of circles this is what passes for sophisticated political discourse any more.
I hope you send this to them anyway. Of course you’d be a massive upgrade, but even if they were interested in your content, you probably didn’t go to the right school, and you definitely don’t drink the right cocktails.
Shaken, not stirred?
the Atlantic has become a disgrace to honest and impartial journalism. Megan Mcardle’s article is really a disappointment to this former subscriber. I am glad I canceled my subscription several years ago.
Ditto. About the subscription lapsing.
Here is what happened:
After four years, their editorial offices have been fully integrated into the Village.
Talk about destroying a major intellectual tradition. From the founders to McArdle. What a devolution. Blame David G. Bradley and James Bennet.
impressive origins! what a long way they’ve fallen!!
Why should the barbarians burn books and magazines when they can just buy them and trash them? A civilized country would have ways to protect its national treasures from these intellectual termites.
Well put. And those ways to “protect its national treasures from these intellectual termites” might be…?
One way is the way Harper’s and Britain’s Guardian survived intact — tax policy and nonprofit opportunity.
They are completely delusional as a political party.
They no longer have viable politics to offer anyone.
All they do is rant-and it is endless-they have nothing else.
They have marginalized themselves.
The healthcare reform issue has brought the crazies out of the woodwork-and it ain’t a pretty sight!
All of this, is to their dismay as a political entity.
Her bullshyt about healthcare has been ridiculous, so of course, I agree with everything you wrote BooMan.