Quote from OPTIONAL777:
Giving license to the most extreme forms of anti-US behavior???
I don't agree. First of all Anti-Americanism is different from anti-Bushism.
As I've tried repeatedly to explain, in my opinion the anti-Bush position in that article went far beyond conventional criticism:
The writer argues that "the United States under George Bush" is really controlled by a "ruling junta." The government itself was installed, he claims, by a kind of "judicial coup d'etat," is further in the grip of extremist religious organizations, and has declared "a policy of unilateral aggression." After a somewhat extended, likewise exaggerated but somewhat less alarmist depiction of Republican economic, environmental, social, and internal security policy, he returns again to his main theme: He claims that "a climate of militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates everything." He patches together stray elements and isolated incidents within Homeland Security policy in order to evoke images of dystopias from "science fiction films." Referring, apparently, to the one instance in which Bush donned a USAF flight suit, the writer goes on to claim that Bush "is the first American president in memory to swagger around in a military uniform." It's a not very subtle way of associating Bush with Hitler and other "great dictators."
Pursuing this theme, the writer declares that the build-up to the war in Iraq in this "new America" offered "almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques." After ignoring the massive dissent, debate, and public protests that took place, hardly the typical adjuncts of totalitarian societies, he then turns to the war itself with another slanted and inaccurate depiction, particularly of how the war itself was covered by the mass media, and, as I argued previously, extends it to an utterly false portrayal of how the aftermath of the major combat has been covered, and about what a supposed news blackout and supposed new propaganda efforts must portend - a new war in Iran.
He sums up his tract by suggesting that what used to be "hyperbolic cliches of anti-Americanism... have now finally come true." He must be referring to the hyberbolic cliches of Soviet and extremist propaganda of the Cold War era, the kind of stuff that Alfonso and msfe seem to take on faith. At this point he raises his rhetoric to an even higher level: "[T]he most frightening American administration in modern times... appalling both to the left and to traditional conservatives... unabashed in its imperialist ambitions... enacting an Orwellian state... dismantling... fundamental tenets of American democracy." His final sentence advocates new departures in opposition based on the recognition that the current government is "unlike any other in this country's history... one for whom democracy is an obstacle."
It is not too much to say that, to an impressionable audience already pre-disposed against American policy, this stuff amounts to a call to arms and a justification of resistance by any means necessary. You can't negotiate with, or seek rapproachment with, or offer compromises with a new Hitler and the powerful country he holds in thrall. Let me put it to you this way: What form of resistance against an appalling, extremist, imperialist, militaristic, aggressive, anti-democratic, virtually totalitarian regime would
not be justified? Perhaps it "cannot be stopped," but, even if so, wouldn't you, say as a brave young German idealist, be justified in making some heroic gesture of defiance against this sci-fi nightmare? Or if you yourself aren't quite brave enough to lift the torch, wouldn't you at least feel justified in helping someone who was, and even if you perhaps differed over some
relatively minor political, social, or religious issues? How could you bring yourself to help the authorities capture someone who was brave enough to lash out against this monstrous danger to the world?
Maybe because you live here and can easily recognize the exaggerations "to make a point" in this polemic, it's easy for you just to shrug it off. For reasons that are unclear to me, you also seem to find it easy to ignore the outright falsehoods, as well as the larger implications of what this author is arguing. He's not content to depict Bush as wrong or misguided or incorrect. He's arguing that American conservatism is a serious disease, and that America is incurably sick with it, and is putting the fate of the world in jeopardy.
You're old enough to have seen this kind of thing many times before, but you've apparently forgotten what it leads to among those naive enough to find it persuasive. Just imagine some Trader556 type, frowny faces and all, facing some personal crisis and being approached by a serious-looking, self-confident man with very clear ideas about what is to be done. Again, it's certainly unlikely that this one article is all by itself going to put someone in the frame of mind to make very harmful decisions about his own life and the lives of others, but it's the kind of material that does exactly that. I've seen it and lived it.
I'll also say, as I think about it, that this is the thing about Ann Coulter's writing that I do find very objectionable. I can see what I think she means when she tosses around terms like "slander" and, even more inflammatory, "treason" to describe actions and attitudes that she honestly believes have directly harmed the interests of the US. I doubt she really believes that, say, Howard Dean needs to be tried and executed for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but I don't doubt that, in a rather well-armed country of 300 million, there might not be a few people who are willing to realize the implications of her language for her. If some asshole takes a shot at Dean or some other leading political opponent of Bush's, and turns out later to have a copy of Coulter's book, a poster of her on his wall, and a bookmark of her website, no one will be able to say that she caused his foolish act, but I don't think anyone will be surprised either.
RS