Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

The End-Of-Year Emopants Blowout!

By Zandar on January 1st, 2012

Both Glenn Greenwald and Taylor Marsh saw fit to end the year with massive anti-Obama rants where they basically announce openly their opposition to the President for 2012. Not that their opposition didn’t exist before, it’s just now official. First, Double G defends Ron Paul’s “effect” on our political discourse: [ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/ ]

There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America’s imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation’s oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War. More than anything, it’s crucial that choice be given to the electorate by subverting the two parties’ full-scale embrace of these hideous programs.



I wish there were someone who did not have Ron Paul’s substantial baggage to achieve this. Before Paul announced his candidacy, I expressed hope in an Out Magazine profile [ http://www.out.com/news-commentary/2011/04/18/glenn-greenwald-life-beyond-borders ] that Gary Johnson would run for President and be the standard-bearer for these views, in the process scrambling bipartisan stasis on these questions. I did that not because I was endorsing his candidacy (as some low-level Democratic Party operative dishonestly tried to claim), but because, as a popular two-term Governor of New Mexico free of Paul’s disturbing history and associations, he seemed to me well-suited to force these debates to be had. But alas, Paul decided to run again, and Johnson — for reasons still very unclear — was forcibly excluded from media debates and rendered a non-person. Since then, Paul’s handling of the very legitimate questions surrounding those rancid newsletters has been disappointing in the extreme, [ http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/qu-1.html ] and that has only served to obscure these vital debates and severely dilute the discourse-enhancing benefits of his candidacy.

He spends the rest of the article saying the President Obama is just as bad if not worse overall than Paul, and far worse than Paul on the specific issues that matter to him. He then proceeds to attack President Obama supporters as evil hypocrites who “don’t want to hear” his “truths”, accusing them of being stuck in Bush-era binary worldviews, but then weasels out of endorsing Paul with constant whining about how nobody but Glenn Greenwald is smart enough to understand his carefully nuanced argument that he’s not endorsing Paul, he just wants someone like Paul to win over the hated, evil Obama. (Apparently that other person is Gary Johnson.)

The projection is apparent in the first hundred words when you realize that it’s Greenwald who has adopted the binary worldview, completely choosing to ignore the circumstances and nuance of realpolitik and the other two branches of government to say “You know, if it wasn’t for the bigotry, the racism, the utter disregard for the federal government and the supposition that states should have the right to discriminate freely, Ron Paul isn’t such a bad guy. Unlike Obama.” Silly, I know. But that one issue is enough for Greenwald to search for an alternative to the President…any alternative.

Replace Ron Paul with Hillary Clinton, and “civil liberties” with “women’s issues” and you get Taylor Marsh’s end of year screed where she declares her vote is now open. [ http://taylormarsh.com/blog/2012/01/the-partys-over/ ]

It’s now even considered an extreme position to think women’s individual freedoms are important. On Obama’s conservative Plan B decision, you get replies like “it’s smart politically” or his fans argue from the right using parental rights over individual female freedoms.

Then there’s the reality that most women have more dire issues on their mind, because reproductive health choices are considered by most to be a given. For sexually active young females, poor women and those in rural areas, however, these issues are attached to one another. However, their stories don’t equal the same coverage as the majority of reports about women today.

Women often share the breadwinner role, so their focus is on who is protecting their bottom line.

Recently on MSNBC when they asked voters in Iowa about their choices, a woman said, “I need to take care of my paycheck, that’s why I’m supporting Romney.”

Why should women automatically bet that Pres. Obama will help their bottom line more than Mitt Romney?

Is it enough that the 111th Congress passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Pres. Obama signed? Women of all political persuasions need to expect all 21st century politicians to support economic equality. We should also demand that when it’s found out we aren’t being treated equally we have recourse, which is what Ledbetter is all about. Would any other Democratic president not have signed the Ledbetter Act? To laud something so simple as financial equality for the same job done reveals women are expecting way too little from politicians that depend on our support to politically survive.

And she, too, falls into the “no real difference” between the parties, as well as pushing for Ron Paul. They all “hate women” equally, to the point that feminists should strongly consider Mitt Romney for President, and that the “only argument” Obama supporters have is that the Republicans will be worse on the issue. In a sane world where Marsh sees Republicans doing everything they can to rid the country of abortion altogether, that argument would be enough.

Instead, we get a long, morose piece on how the Democrats are no longer worth supporting, and that a feminist is all but washing her hands of voting in 2012, and doesn’t really care if the Republicans win in 2012 or not.

And I shake my head, because these arguments are so terrible that I have to conclude that neither Greenwald nor Marsh actually believe them. At the very least, they maintain their “integrity” by convincing us to not vote at all, and will spend 2012 doing so. And that’s the real danger, here.

Who needs Republicans disenfranchising people at the state level when Greenwald and Marsh will do it for free?

[UPDATE] Maha, Tom Hilton, and Scott Lemieux all decimate this nonsense as well with some excellent work, and Bob Cesca reminds us that Ron Paul’s “anti-war history” and his “principled stance against targeted assassinations” is bullshit, mainly because he did vote for the AUMF for Afghanistan in 2001 and then sponsored a bill that would have given the country the ability to issue letters of marque and reprisal against terrorists, both of which are completely ignored by Greenwald and Marsh. In other words, Ron Paul is about as anti-war as I am a Norwegian midwife who collects Faberge’ eggs.

Links from the UPDATE:

Libertarianism vs. Liberty
http://www.mahablog.com/2012/01/01/libertarianism-vs-liberty/

Ron Paul: Not a Civil Libertarian
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-paul-not-civil-libertarian-last.html

What’s Challenging About Paul?
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/12/whats-challenging-about-paul

@bobcesca_go Bob Cesca

FACT: Ron Paul voted for the first AUMF. FACT: Ron Paul introduced a $40B bill calling for the private assassinations of al-Qaeda members.
1 Jan via web https://twitter.com/#!/bobcesca_go/status/153544562026102784

BILL TITLE: To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States. Ron Paul VOTED FOR THIS.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll342.xml

Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

To authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal with respect to certain acts of air piracy upon the United States on September 11, 2001, and other similar acts of war planned for the future.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.3076:

http://www.angryblacklady.com/2012/01/01/the-end-of-year-emopants-blowout/#more-63984