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Have the ‘wingers turned us into a bed-wetter nation?

By SusanUnPC on September 26, 2007 at 2:08 AM in Current Affairs, Iran

In “Bed-wetter Nation,” his commentary for CommonSense, a project of TomPaine.com, Rick Perlstein wonders, given the treatment of Ahmadinejad this week, if — these days — “when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess.”

[W]hat is conservative rule doing to our nation’s soul? How is it rewiring our hearts and minds? What kind of damage are they doing to the American character? And can we ever recover?

So: what is the American character? Hard to say, of course. But I daresay we know it when we see it. Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. …

Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people—then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers’ family quarters. Visited the Agriculture Department’s 12,000 acre research station (“If you didn’t give a turkey a passport you couldn’t tell the difference between a Communist and capitalist turkey”), spoke to the National Press Club, toured Manhattan, San Francisco (where he debated Walter Reuther on Stalin’s crimes before a retinue of AFL-CIO leaders, or in K’s words, “capitalist lackeys”), and Los Angeles (there he supped at the 20th Century Fox commissary, visited the set of the Frank Sinatra picture Can Can but to his great disappointment did not get to visit Disneyland), and sat down one more with the president, at Camp David. Mrs. K did the ladies-who-lunch circuit, with Pat Nixon as guide. Eleanor Roosevelt toured them through Hyde Park. It’s not like it was all hearts and flowers. He bellowed that America, as Time magazine reported, “must close down its worldwide deterrent bases and disarm.” Reporters asked him what he’d been doing during Stalin’s blood purges, and the 1956 invasion of Hungary. A banquet of 27 industrialists tried to impress upon him the merits of capitalism. Nelson Rockefeller rapped with him about the Bible.

Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Had the general running the country—the man who had faced down Hitler!—proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?

No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great. We had our neuroses, to be sure—plenty of them.

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess. Iran’s president speaks at a great American university. That university’s president, in the act of introducing his lecture, whines like a baby bereft of his pacifier that his guest is a big meany poopy-head. City Council members, too, and a rabbi, make like ten-year-olds, giving their press conference in front of a sign with his face struck through and the legend “Go To Hell.” Up in Albany, Democratic leader Sheldon Silver treat the students of this great university like ten years olds, threatening to defund Columbia University lest censors like himself prove unable to shut the poor children’s ears to difficult speech. (What, was he worried they’d be convinced, join the jihad?) Then a Republican presidential candidate chimes in—bye, bye, federalism!—saying Washington should starve the school of funds, too. American diplomats used to have the gumption to spar face to face with dreaded foreign leaders. Now they go on cable TV and whine about what a “travesty” it would have been to visit a site which properly should belong to the world. Hundreds of foreign nationals died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (maybe even some of the Iranian!). Yet we have to systematically repress that—as if our national ego would crack like fine crystal if we were forced to acknowledge the mingling of American blood with that of mere foreigners. …

[Perlstein quotes some of the hysterical rhetoric from this week.]

This stuff is mind-numbingly hysterical—literally. Such rhetoric is literally calculated to numb the mind, to render any rational calculus impossible, to reduce democratic deliberation on the most subtle and difficult issues of our time to mere grunts and snorts, turning readers’ minds to mush. That’s what the conservative media is all about.

The worst thing about, however, is how many people who should know better have surrendered it. They’ve lowered us all to their own pants-piddling level. And somewhere, Nikita Khrushchev is smiling. For well and truly, he is right. We have been buried—by our own demobilizing.

READ ALL.

Shirin

Bad guy? As bad guys go Ahmedinejad is not very impressive, unless having a big mouth makes someone a badguy.

If you want a REAL bad guy there are plenty of them hanging out at the White House.
The Oracle

All Republicans and even some conservative Democrats should be issued industrial-strength Depends. Terror Alert. Terror Alert. Terror Alert. Oops. Someone pooped in their pants. Time for them to change their Depends.
Doran Williams

It is in the area of fear-mongering, and this area alone, that George Bush has strongly, effectively demonstrated his ability to lead. It is not too far fetched to suggest, as I will, that he excells in this area because he is, deep down, a desperately fearful and cowardly individual. Ike was not: He led from a position of personal courage and strength, and the Nation reflected that character of the leader and indeed exulted in the kinds of courageous encounters with “the enemy” that Perlstein describes.

The conservatives who follow Bush blindly in almost all the provinces of his domestic, foreign, economic, social, etc., policies, where his leadership of the Nation is a failure, are merely, and blindly, following his leadership in fearfulness.

I don’t agree with Perlstein that this Nation has become a pants wetting, pants shitting Nation of scaredy cats. What we see with Bush and his conservative, rather mindless following, as demonstrated by the treatment of and commentary about the President of Iran, is the whining of a small minority who happen to have their piss-stained hands on some levers of mass communication and political power. That situation must change. I think it will.
bob h

A lot of this reflects the hysteria of the AIPAC types, who are effective at suppressing free speech they imagine is hurtful to Israel.
Cee

Hillary added her name to this hysteria.
http://robinstorm.blogspot.com Rob

I hate to say this but Bollinger played up to the NYC Jewish Lobby that pumps money into the school and especially it new expansion plans.

Free Speech my butt! When Bollinger starts allowing ROTC back onto campus and stops hiding under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” crock of crap, while he relied on members of the US Militsry and Defense Department for a amici brief in support of a affirmative action law suit then maybe he can start to be believed..

BTW this talk was not a Bollinger venture. This entire deal was started by Lisa Anderson the former Dean of the Foreign Affairs School. And when it exploded last year Bollinger stopped the visit because of “safety” concerns.

Basically Bollinger is nothing more than the trustee’s puppet… Maybe he’s still looking to run Harvard…..
priscianus jr

You’re right that the USA has gone down in the character department, but let’s not ignore the obvious. The enemy de jour, Iran, is a mere pipsqueak compared to the USSR of 1959. Even though they are supposed to be the world’s greatest threat, we don’t have to treat them with even a modicum of repect because, after all, they’re only “third world,” and, in actual fact, not a threat at all. It’s been said many times before, but I’ll say it again. Bush/Cheney are all posturing, all the time. They are only interested in political myth and imagery. They have no desire or ability to discover a fact-based reality.

taters

Well done Susan
Priscianus,
My sentiments exactly. These folks must have worse than bedwetters during the height of the Cold War.

Leslie

Bollinger is supposedly a first-amendment scholar. If Bollinger and others really wanted to discount Ahmadinejad for his views, the best way to do that is to allow him to speak and then question him. If unwilling to do that, then why invite the man to speak at all? But they did invite him…so they should’ve shown him the same respect and courtesy they would any other guest.

And it’s absurd to deny funding to Columbia because of who their guest speakers are. It’s a university in the US, which is supposed to uphold the principles of free speech.

But I guess humanizing someone the Bushies want to bomb is too dangerous.

lidia

Bollinger highly prased the visiting Pakistan’s dictator not long ago LOL

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

Pakistan’s dictator is one of the good guys! Has anyone told Bollinger et al that Ahmadinejad isn’t the ruler of Iran?

Delia

Well, it’s pretty obvious that you have to be on the White House talking points email list to know who are the good guys (like, um, Musharref) and who are the latest Evil Reincarnations of Hitler Who Can Kill You By Squinting At You Funny. Either that, or you have to be willing to watch reruns of 24 every night until you’re a blibbering idiot who will believe every scare tactic you hear on the teevee set.

ybnormal

It strikes me that there’s a possible remedy for bed-wetting.

Ahmadinejad made a specific challenge, presented as an invitation, for students to visit his country and universities. Why not take him up on it?

I would bet that if no one does, there will be Iranian press commentary about it’s absence; words to the effect of Americans being afraid to do so.

How about a delegation of students from a variety of universities, with members of varying pre-conceptions about Iran, funded as a research project.

It might expose who’s really most afraid, which is the State Deptartment, if they try to kill the move.

Shirin

True. And what, exactly, is the State Department REALLY afraid of? What, exactly, is it that would induce them to stop such a project? I submit that they would stop the project out of fear that the students might come back with some REAL experience and some REAL information about the REAL Iran.
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

Right, the State Dept. is worried the students will return as jihadis. Absurd.

The only thing I’d be worried about: should the students visit before or after Bush bombs Iran?

Shirin

Both. That way they can see the before and after.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

Good point.

I had an Iranian friend in high school, and then another Iranian friend in college. We lost touch. But I hope they’re not back in Iran right now.

ybnormal

A couple of other possibilities; University of CA has a program called ‘UC in DC’ where students go to DC as interns for Congress. My step-daughter went while at UCSB, and worked for Congressman Adam Schiff. Why not extend it out to ambassador internship to Iran? There might well be a long cautious pause to bomb a country where it’s widely known that American students are officially visiting.

Columbia might not have the balls, but UC Berkeley, with their long tradition of student uppityness, just might.

Delia

NO NO NO. This wouldn’t work at all. I mean, if we had lots of Americans getting to understand Iranians and realizing that they’re just ordinary people and that Muslims go about their lives pretty much like anybody else . . . . Well, this would just blow all this Axis of Evil and Muslim terrorist mythology right out the door, wouldn’t it? And then where would their lovely Global War on Terror and their Republic of Fear be,that they’ve worked so hard to cultivate? All that hard work for nothing? I think not. They’re going to make bloody sure that the great masses of the American people know as little about Iran (or any Muslim nation) as possible.

http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

I was spellbound by Perlstein’s richly detailed description of Khrushchev’s visit to the U.S. and his treatment by President Eisenhower and other dignitaries.

Since I was a wee tyke at the time, I only vaguely recall the event. I remember my grandmother earnestly, gravely saying that Khrushchev was the biggest threat to the world — she, like many average Americans, was sincerely swept up by the rhetoric of the times. But, at the same time, there was that monstrous threat in meetings with Ike and touring all kinds of U.S. operations and facilities. The underlying feeling, I recall, was that that monstrous threat could do no harm on U.S. soil and might even find out how great a people we were. (That he might not be such a monstrous threat wasn’t a consideration, at least in my neck of the woods, but at the least he was diminished just a bit in our minds as a threat.)

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

Well exactly. That’s one of the benefits of talking. It just boggles the mind that the Bushies would even consider another unprovoked war without first attempting even the appearance of diplomacy.

mudkitty

The answer to the question in the title of this post is “yes.”
http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

Maureen Dowd is wonderful on the subject today: ‘Fruitbat’ at Bat. The beginning:

We just can’t stop being nice to Iran.

First, we break Iraq and hand it over to the Shiites, putting in a puppet who leans toward Iran and is aligned with the Shiite militias bankrolled by Iran. Then, as Peter Galbraith writes in The New York Review of Books, President Bush facilitates “the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia,” with the ironic twist that “there is now substantially more personal freedom in Iran than in Southern Iraq.”

And on top of all that, we help build up the self-serving doofus Iranian president, a frontman with a Ph.D. in traffic management, into the sort of larger-than-life demon that the real powers in Iran — the mullahs — can love.

New York’s hot blast of nastiness, jingoism and xenophobia toward its guest, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, only served to pump him up for his domestic audience. Iranians felt that their president had tied everyone in knots, including the “Zionist Jews,” as Iranian state television said. The Times reports that Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards, was on TV criticizing the rude treatment his president received: “It is shocking that a country that claims to be civilized treats him that way.” …

READ ALL — especially now that it’s free to read the NYT columnists!

John Witherspoon

For some reason I find Dowd to be all but unreadable. Perhaps it is “witty” quips like this: “And on top of all that, we help build up the self-serving doofus Iranian president, a frontman with a Ph.D. in traffic management,” from someone who has only a BA in English from a 3rd rate university. I don’t especially admire the irony of lambasting someone before you criticize others for the same…

http://www.liberaltopia.org RS Janes

Ah, Mr. Witherspoon, your deft sneer at Maureen Dowd’s educational background indicates a true American aristocrat who bleeds royal blue, and no doubt has a B.A. in English from a far superior second-rate university.

Historically, we’ve seen that first-rate universities inevitably turn out first-rate graduates — why, our sitting president, just for one prominent example, holds degrees from both Yale and Harvard Business School where, without question, the “childrens do learn” because the “standards are high and results are measured.”

Then there are all of the political and literary deadwood littering the past who had no college education to speak of; such fumbling phonetic failures as William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Tom Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Twain. Lacking a gilt-edged sheepskin, their laughable attempts at writing were doomed from the start.

Speaking of Burns, you might have come across these pertinent lines of his while lolling in the frat house of your prestigious college, dutifully drinking away Daddy’s money. (Out of respect for your English education, I’ve translated the passage from the original Scottish dialect):

A set of dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They go in bulls, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak;
And since they think to climb Parnassus
By dint of Greek!

Give me a spark of Nature’s fire,
That’s all the leaning I desire;
Then though I toil through muck and mire,
At plow and cart,
My muse, though homely in attire,
May touch the heart.
– Robert Burns, “Epistle To J. Lapraik, An Old Scottish Bard,” 1785.

Mr. Witherspoon, you don’t need to fret — your snooty pedantic muse will never touch anyone’s heart.
simon

Ah, Mr Withersponn:

Can’t compete, huh?

Those Ivy League first rate universities brought us this spineless, unthinking corrupt mediocre government.

Why?

And what we will do about it, to reverse the trends?

Dowd’s writing shows humor, the ability to mix vernacular with the formal, indicative of post modern technique. Artistic progress is intellectual progress, which means cultural progress, and that gives us a competitive America. What does Dowd’s writing, like genuine rap, another form of intertextuality, tell us about the current state of the world, our nation, ?

You dont know, it never occurred to you. Now imagine you’re in Washington, making policy decisions. What else have you missed?

What you meant to say was Dowd’s writing threatens you, and the status quo. Where does that leave YOU? Progress threatens those looking for tangible securities, it means they have to compete.

Are you not up to date with the application of forty year old literary theory?

The result of your second rate university, are you an out of touch Yalie, what?

You’re reasoning for your criticism of Dowd CAN be based on content, when you show familiarity with post modernist critical theory. To simply criticize her school is specious reasoning, indicative of your insecurities. You show no understanding of her work in modern context, making you look, um, uneducated, stupid. So, if I were an employer, say, I’d take Dowd, as you show an appalling amount of ignorance, both about Dowd’s work, modern literary theory, and your own motivations.

http://cujo359.blogspot.com Cujo359

It’s sobering to watch Ken Burns’ The War, which focuses on the lives of individual Americans to show what it was like to be an American in those days, and recall that as a much smaller nation we faced two dreadful enemies with stoicism and resolve. They were so dangerous that ten percent of us were in uniform by the end of the war.

Perhaps I should say “they” faced them, because few of us were around back then. Now, two-bit dictators like Ahmadinajad come to this country and we go apoplectic. We’ve become pathetic.

http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

I’ve only watched Sunday night’s first installment, but found it fascinating and informative. I hadn’t known the extent of the German attacks on supply ships up and down the East Coast. Or how the U.S. military was still using WWI uniforms and rifles. And on and on. But, as you say, the Americans rose up — despite their reluctance to get involved for a long time — and gave it their all. Iran is in no way a similar threat.

Shirin

Iran is in no way a threat of any kind.

THIS IS A MANUFACTURED CRISIS, FOLKS! They have manufactured this crisis just as the manufactured the supposed crisis that gave them the pretext for their aggression against Iraq. Why is that not obvious to the majority of Americans, and to the mainstream media? Why are people buying into this just the way they bought into the Iraq thing? Are Americans, like their president, incapable of learning?!

Dee Loralei

I don’t think we as a nation have become bedwetting thumbsucking titty babies. I think our courageous leader and his dark lord Cheney and their conservative minions have. And I think that there is something inside the belt-way that makes otherwise normal and sane, non-conservatives, become pantspissers.

Just look at their recent votes. Two MoveOn condemnations, by large majorities. And the Iranian vote today in the Senate. Hillary lost whatever modicum of respect I had for her. She will not be allowed to get away with the “if only we had known then…” when it comes to allowing this pissant his Iranian war crime.

Yes Susan, you and Leslie state some fine reasons why I should vote for Hillary if she is the Dem nominee. I agree that healthcare and the environment and the Supreme Courts are all great and worthy goals. But honestly, if we allow another war to happen now, or early on in the next administration we won’t have any need for those things because we won’t have a government, and economy or a world in which to need them. And if we let these people attack Iran and start WWIII, then we will all be as guilty as the Germans were.

The bad news I have no idea how I, or any of us can stop it. But I vow to remain uncowed and unbowed. And I refuse to become a chickenlittle chicken hawk, like those people whom we call our leaders.

http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

While I don’t agree with the vote today, I also have ZERO fear that any of the Democratic candidates — any of them — will initiate a new war if elected president.

They may take punitive actions. They make make harsh votes. With a SANE person, that’s an essential part of tough diplomacy that leads to improvements. That is quite separate from actually going to war.

If we turn our noses up at the Democratic candidate, and help elect a Republican, we ENSURE that America will have more wars — and not just with Iran.

That’s my bottom line. I will support any Democratic candidate for that reason. I may not like everything about each one of them — and there are aspects to each that I don’t like — I have no fear that they’re off-their-rockers mad for war, or lazy like Thompson who’d let the Neo-cons run the show while he naps.
http://www.liberaltopia.org RS Janes

Dee, Bush and Cheney perfectly fit the psychological profile of the guy who has never done anything dangerous in his life but aspires to be respected by other men. (Warning: thumbnail psychology coming up.)

Bush never really ‘served’ during the Vietnam war — in those days a National Guard berth was a pass on combat — you knew you’d never leave the country. And to be attached to a unit nicknamed the ‘Champaign Squadron’… I read Bush practices his swagger and facial expressions in front of a mirror, even his ‘sincere’ look. This is a tough guy? This is a man who’s had everything handed to him his entire life and has never been allowed to fail because Daddy and Mommy were standing by — he is insecure and weak inside and I think he has some notion that he’s in a job over his head, so he panics and cracks down, babbling pathetically about all of the ‘hard work’ he does — a typical reaction of those ‘bed-wetters’ unable to cope with their jobs. Bush, internally, may very well be terrified of a world he doesn’t understand, just as he’s terrified of his mother.

Dick Cheney has spent most of his adult life as a courtier to another man, usually a politician. He has learned to play a kneeling Cromwell to Ford, Reagan and Bush Senior, and has mastered the pissy office cat-fighting within the ranks, an emasculating position. When he had a chance to serve in combat in a war which he supported, he “had better things to do” such as making sure his lily-white ass never came in contact with a round fired by a North Vietnamese soldier.

With his ludicrous talking out of the side of his mouth like something out of a Jimmy Cagney gangster movie of the 30s, he, too, is an insecure, pretend tough guy who is so scared that he hides in reinforced bunkers and kills only farm-raised birds, not wanting to chance the potential embarrassment of hunting in the wild. Real hunters laugh at pampered idiots like Cheney, just like real Texas ranchers chuckle at Bush’s perennial brush clearing photo-ops. (Real ranchers hire teenage boys to do that for them and it’s not a big manly deal.)

Look at their panicked reaction to 9/11 — they are wimpy, incompetent pants-pissers of the first order. If the Dems had any naugas, they would have been hitting this point continuously since 2003, but most of them seem to be even more cowardly than the puling Little King and his phony-baloney Darth Vader wannabe.

http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

Michelle Malkin — I’m shocked — didn’t like Perlstein’s essay: “A left-wing screed by one Rick Perlstein, accusing conservatives of creating a “bed-wetter” nation and decrying the uproar over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia, got a bit of buzz yesterda …”
Jess Wonderin

KYSER SOSAY! – KYSER SOSAY! – KYSER SOSAY!!!!

Did we fill our Depends??? This entire approach to “terra” is bullshit – where was the national fear and wholesale destruction of our Constitution when the Soviets had REAL atomic weapons ABLE to reach us and “mad men” running things . . . where was the rush to give up freedom of movement and speech because the Soviets had spies and training camps for “terra-ist” in Cuba, Eastern Europe, Egypt, Libya, and the frickin’ Chinese were poised to overrun our West (they just bought it, and will be shipping it off soon as foreclosure closes . . .) – pissy pants Republican NeoCon, last to join, first to push us unto war . . . pisssy, pissy, pissy, let’s spend the time on a Betrayus AD . . .
Centrocitta

….unless having a big mouth makes someone a badguy….

Speaking of a big mouth, I must make a comment about Karnit, the Israeli woman whose soldier husband is lost in Lebanon. This woman is like Cow Manure — all over the place. She is a citizen of NEITHER of my two coutries but has been in both trying to get info on her mate.

First, she’s at a State of the Union address in Washington and then she’s visiting the Pope! Then she’s back in the USA again at the United Nations demanding an answer from Ahmadinijad. Of course, he ignored her and took the next question. Brava Maumoudi! Really, Karnit is as obnoxious and offensive as the Russian Zionist woman I encountered in a restaurant in Florence, sending food back and ordering waiters around while bragging that she was an American (naturalized, of course). Real Americans in the place were cringing.
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http://deleted lester

buchanan had a similar column yesterday. He, like Ron Paul has been among the most vocal in opposing a possible war with Iran, as he was in opposing, bascially by himself as far as the media goes, the war in iraq. just like in 03 the liberals are going along with it because they don’t want to look weak on defense.

We on the anti war right have been right about the neo cons from the begining, and as a reward we get called racists and ignored. I’m through with the democrats. they have no vision for getting us out of iraq or for this country. their war is against capitalism, not big brother.

Shirin

Lester, as I have said before, most of the Democrats, Hillary included, have the same – or at least a similar – lust for empire as the Republicans. They are just not as in-your-face about it.
lidia

“their war is against capitalism, not big brother.”

So dems are anti-capitalist? I got it right? Or it is just my not-so perfect Engish?

http://deleted lester

shirin- this is their “new direction for america”?
could have fooled me
lester

lidia- I’d say in general they are yeah.
http://dierks-bentley-ticket.fabrizioferrari.cn/rubberband-powered-car.html Platon

Cool.