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Dark of Heartness, Part II:
Compassionless Conservatives
By David
Michael Green
04/20/07 "ICH
" -- --Et tu, Wolfie?
Et tu?
Imagine our shock at Paul
Wolfowitz’s shock. He not only masterminded humanity’s greatest
current catastrophe, the US invasion of Iraq, but he did so by
fabricating and marketing a complete mythological cosmology of
Good versus Evil (Bush good! Saddam bad!), the likes of which
might have left even Jim Jones envious and amazed. And he did
so in a fashion that no doubt brought a posthumous smile to the
face of his graduate school mentor, Leo Strauss, who taught that
we of the hoi polloi don’t have the right stuff to maintain our
democracy, and thus need enlightened elites like Wolfowitz to
spoon feed us religion and other fairytales in order to keep us
on the right course, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.
But then, of course, the whole
dang thing came a cropper in Baghdad, and – as if the symmetries
between Vietnam and Iraq weren’t already spookily profound
enough – Wolfie found himself following the trail of shame
pioneered by Robert McNamara, casually parachuting out of his
Pentagon office and into the presidency of the World Bank.
(Does this mean that, like McNamara, thirty years from now
Wolfowitz will be the subject of a feature film in which he
kinda sorta apologizes for his grand goof? We’ll just have to
wait and see if he becomes the last human on earth to recognize
the full magnitude of his spectacular achievement in
Mesopotamia.) Meanwhile, safely ensconced at the apex of
financial (as opposed to military) power, Wolfowitz simply
refused any longer to answer questions related to his previous
employment. Though the dead and the dying of Iraq will not be
any time soon, Wolfowitz had simply moved on.
And, with seemingly nary a whiff
of irony about him, he came to his new position preaching the
virtues of ‘accountability’. Moreover, Wolfowitz – dictatorial
leadership style no worse for wear after the last go ‘round –
blasted into the World Bank declaring that the evils of
corruption were the key source of global development problems,
and that rooting them out would become job one at the Bank. But
now he and his supporters, including the Wall Street Journal,
the National Review and the White House, profess shock at all
the hullabaloo generated by the revelation that the
anti-corruption president was ordering up massive promotions for
his girlfriend (also his employee) while simultaneously
preaching the gospel of squeaky clean, again with no apparent
sense of irony. So Mr. Accountability is now running around
trying to make sure that no one holds Mr. Anti-Corruption
accountable for his corruption. Meanwhile, Mr.
It’s-All-About-Me is utterly uncomprehending when it comes to
understanding other people’s feelings about all this.
What’s going on, here? Sadly, a
pattern.
But at least one which we’ve
finally figured out. Did you here about the recent study in
which biologists discovered an overwhelmingly robust
relationship between genetics and ideology? It seems that, like
chimps (with no offense intended to my furry primate friends),
conservatives are 99.87 percent identical to fully developed
homo sapiens, except that they are missing one particular strand
of DNA that scientists say is intimately linked with the human
capacity for compassion.
In the world of Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the fact that the above paragraph is not
true (or at least not yet; or at least not to my knowledge)
would, of course, be a fact of little consequence (in fact, it
wouldn’t be a fact at all). If the assertion had any utility in
advancing one or more of their venal objectives, it would be
promptly employed, regardless of its veracity. Like, for
example – and I’ll just make something up at random here –
mushroom cloud smoking guns, or knowing for sure where the WMD
were stashed in Iraq (around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west,
south and north somewhat, of course).
And its too bad I’m not
self-loathing enough to traffic in the sort of bald-faced lies
which have become a staple of the regressive diet in recent
decades, because this scientific non-finding concerning the
missing bit of DNA would otherwise explain so much, wouldn’t
it?
Have you noticed with the
regressive right how the rules that they love to apply to you
and me somehow don’t seem to apply to them? And that when those
rules inevitably come crashing into even their privileged lives
that they miraculously have a change of heart? And it does
happen inevitably. As even the non-regressive New Jersey
governor Jon Corzine just found out, while politicians may often
successfully place themselves above the law, the laws of physics
offer no such exemptions to either the rich or the powerful (and
Corzine is very much both). (Note to the good folks reading
this: Wear your seatbelt. Note to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh
and the rest of youse nasties: Your safety belt usage is
optional.)
But, seriously, have you noticed
that the only time you see compassion from conservatives is when
it applies to them (which means, of course, that it’s not really
compassion at all)? That’s just the pattern, isn’t it? That’s
precisely how it works. The examples are myriad.
Quick, name one conservative
figure who is an avid supporter of ending the gun madness which
claims thirty thousand casualties in this country every year.
Why, it’s James Brady. How could we possibly explain the
uniqueness of this apostasy by a former leading figure in the
Reagan administration? Could it have anything to do with the
bullet that penetrated his skull in the course of the attempt on
Reagan’s life?
And while we’re talking Reagans,
how ‘bout that Nancy, eh? She’s a solid citizen, isn’t she? A
good, old-fashioned regressive from the Marie Antoinette
school. A firm supporter of tax cuts for the rich,
war-mongering wherever possible, and eviscerating school lunch
programs for indigent children (what, you have a problem with
counting ketchup as a vegetable?). Except, of course, for one
issue where she’s broken publicly with the troglodyte tendency:
stem cell research. What’s amazing about that, if you think
about it, is the massive coincidence of her position on that
issue and the fact that she suffered for years taking care of
her husband while Alzheimer’s – a disease likely to be cured by
such research – turned his brain to mush. What a bizarre,
random, happenstance!
If your heart bleeds for Nancy,
it must surely go out to Dick Cheney, who could (literally and
figuratively) badly use it. Don’t you just feel awful for this
guy, the way he gets roughed up over his daughter’s sexual
orientation? When she and her lesbian partner gave birth to a
child they are raising together, journalists actually asked
Grandad questions about that! With such impudence having
consumed the bold gatekeepers of the Fourth Estate, it is no
wonder Cheney got all huffy and refused to answer. For
crissakes, you’d think he was one of those crass politicians who
win elections by using gays as political whipping boys or
something! Cheney seems to be saying that people’s sexual
orientation is their own business, not the government’s, and I
for one am glad that he’s there in Washington making sure that’s
so. You go, Dick!
I’m also glad that Jeb Bush is
out there protecting us from the thinly-veiled racism that
politicians of a certain persuasion are fond of using when
(gay-bashing having lost its bite), they pontificate with malice
aforethought about the current illegal immigration ‘crisis’.
Not Jeb, though. He’s a regular profile in courage. That’s why
it was reported that “the Florida governor calls the
anti‑immigration ‘chest pounding’ of politicians hurtful”. You
really have to admire selfless politicians like Jebby, willing
to cut across the vicious political grain of the regressive
right, with nothing in it for themselves, and stand four-square
behind fundamental human rights principles like..., like...,
well, like not demonizing immigrants in order to score political
points. Oh, did I mention that Jeb’s wife Columba is Mexican?
If you’re like me, you’ve long
recognized Trent Lott and his Republican colleagues as stalwart
advocates for the ordinary guy against the evils of corporate
predators continually seeking to ransack hapless Americans, pin
them to the wall, and fleece them mercilessly. Frankly, looking
at the senator’s voting record in favor of tax cuts for the
wealthy, draconian bankruptcy laws, or meat-axe cuts to social
spending can be a bit deceiving. He’s really a powerful voice
in Washington for the downtrodden who are forever getting kicked
around by big business. It was no surprise, then, that Lott was
fuming at the despicable treatment that insurance companies
doled out to the already miserable citizens of the Gulf Coast
after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their homes. Who wouldn’t be
incensed at the insurance companies refusing to pay off claims
due to policyholders? “I am outraged,” he said. “I’m concerned
there are lots of abuses in the aftermath of the hurricane.” Of
course, given his well-established track record fighting for the
little guy, I doubt seriously that State Farm’s rejection of
Lott’s personal claim for his loss of a $400,000 home had
anything to do with his position on this issue. (Memo to State
Farm CEO: Fire your entire senior management team for a
complete absence of political savvy. Memo to State Farm Board:
Fire your CEO for making lousy personnel choices.)
You see the same kind of thing
with guys like Clarence Thomas, who vigilantly and even
vehemently guards the barricades against the societal corrosion
endemic to programs like affirmative action. Apparently,
nothing so incenses the good justice more than the idea that
historically thwarted classes of individuals might get some
remedial assistance from governing institutions to overcome the
barriers they still face today. Preposterous! Offensive!
Outrageous! Rightly so, Judge T. has so far found only one
single individual for whom the advantages of affirmative action
seem to pass muster against his strict criteria for protection
of the endangered commonweal. What is so bizarre is the
remarkable coincidence in all this: This person has exactly the
same name as the judge! (Whether he also shares Justice Thomas’
passion for pornography is unknown at this time.)
But you gotta love Matthew Dowd,
especially. With the exception of Karl Rove, perhaps no one in
the world is more responsible for making sure that George W.
Bush is your president. It seems that Dowd, the chief campaign
strategist for the 2004 Bush campaign, was just utterly
enthralled with the personality of Young George, going all the
way back to Texas days. And who could blame him for that?
Smart, articulate, heroic, uniting, tolerant, wise – George W.
Bush has it all. “It's almost like you fall in love”, Dowd said
(not that kind of love, of course – even Cheney’s not up for
this one). So Matt did what needed to be done (and, trust me on
this, there was a lot, and it was ugly) to push The Disaster
That Is Bush over the finish line in 2004. Now, barely two
years later, he reveals that it was a mistake, so much so that
recently he had actually even written an op-ed piece entitled
“Kerry Was Right”. He somehow never quite managed to submit it,
but that’s another story.
Dowd ran the 2004 campaign
around security fears, arguing that voters “trust this president
more than they trust [flip-flopping] Senator Kerry on Iraq”.
Now he tells us he was wrong. Wow, you don’t see that happen
every day, and kudos to Dowd for his courageous statements. I’m
quite sure they had nothing to do with the fact that the Bush
administration is about to ship his son Daniel over to Iraq. I
also doubt that fact has anything to do with why Daniel’s father
now says “I do feel a calling of trying to re‑establish a level
of gentleness in the world”. I agree that’s a pretty good idea,
Matt. I even thought it was a good idea in 2004.
These are all great examples of
concerned conservative compassion, but my true favorites are the
ones regarding criminal justice values. You know, like Rush
Limbaugh, who regularly rails on about how we should string up
druggies and how there’s nothing wrong with denying due process
to those bad people incarcerated at Guantánamo. How different
was his tune when ‘prosecutorial zealousness’ and bias led to
his arrest for drug abuse, and when he was, I’m pretty sure,
glad to have a high-priced lawyer, appellate courts, and the
right to throw bail. Then there was Bob Ney and Mark Foley
entering alcohol rehab programs after being exposed as thieves
and perverts. Gosh, whatever happened to that old time religion
of ‘personal responsibility’? Or how about Bush administration
insider David Safavian pleading for leniency from the court
before being sentenced to 18 months for corruption in the
Abramoff case. Leniency? I don’t remember seeing a lot of that
in the conservative playbook. You mean like for indigent
African American convicts, former abused children one and all,
shipped off to death row without even competent counsel? That
kind of leniency?
Now comes the visage of Alberto
Gonzales, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the
land. Back in the day, the “Judge” (as he likes his staff to
call him) was the plausible deniability guy for a Texas governor
named Bush. Gonzales would give Bush the most wonderfully brief
and narrow summaries of death row clemency appeals that could
possibly be put together and, amazingly, Bush would always deny
them. This was all done in the name of getting tough on law and
order, mind you. Now the Attorney General’s former top staffer
has testified before Congress that Gonzales lied about his
involvement in firing prosecutors for political reasons.
Records released so far also prove he’s lied. And another top
staffer has taken the Fifth to avoid testifying at all. It
kinda looks like Gonzales is going down, doesn’t it? And I’m
just guessing, but I bet that when he seeks a pardon from the
president for his crimes, he’ll be thankful that he himself is
not writing the brief.
Anyhow, you get the picture
here? Me, I’m thinking about renouncing my silly moral hangups
about truth and all that junk, and just going with the genetic
story after all, ‘cause it seems so damn true! Is there any
doubt but that conservatives are simply missing the compassion
gene? Nancy Reagan couldn’t give a damn about your specific
healthcare problem until it became her problem, then she figured
it out – but only that. Don’t hold your breath waiting for
enlightened leadership on Social Security, a living wage or even
general healthcare delivery from the wife of the president who
couldn’t even mouth the word “AIDS” while the disease was
beginning its march to the sea in the 1980s, taking out a wide
swath of Americans along the way.
Matthew Dowd not only sold us a
lying president and his prevarications about war just three
years ago, but he built an entire campaign around an even more
egregious lie – that his candidate was a war hero, and that the
other candidate, an actual war hero, was a weak imposter. Now,
as his own misdeeds loom up with the potential to bite him back
hard, like some figure out of Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy, he
finds doubt and regret. Doubt? Regret? I tell you what, man,
you go drink down one percent of the blood you’ve spilled,
first. You go apologize on your hands and knees to one percent
of the families you’ve decimated. You go pay back one percent
of the treasure you’ve wasted – money needed for healthcare and
education. Then come tell us your self-serving tales of doubt
and regret. Because, funny, somehow we never got that vibe from
you in 2004.
If it seems like conservatives
are congenitally incapable of compassion until they’ve had to
struggle with something themselves, that’s because it’s true.
If you think the whole business of wealthy Americans demanding
additional tax cuts for themselves to pay for their third yacht
while others go to bed hungry is part of the same mentality,
that’s because it is. If you’re horrified that people are
capable of such rampant hypocrisy, you ought to be. This is
truly a scary bunch, with the full intellectual firepower of
adults, but with social ethics that could make the dynamics of a
kindergarten sandbox seem positively Gandhian by comparison.
And that leaves we more
enlightened grown-ups with just two choices. We could make sure
that every conservative in the White House or Congress loses a
child in Baghdad, has another one shot-up with the assault
rifles the NRA defends, contracts AIDS, gets wrongly accused of
a capital offense and is forced to take a court-appointed
drunken lawyer getting paid $6.75 and hour and sleeping during
court, is forced to live off a Wal-Mart wage, gets kicked off
the voting rolls because of their race, lives in New Orleans and
depends on FEMA for housing assistance, gets knocked-up and has
to figure out how to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, gets
stomped to a bloody pulp because of their sexual orientation,
and has to cope by themselves with a parent whose mind has been
destroyed by Alzheimer’s. That’s one alternative. And wouldn’t
they (and, more importantly, we) be better off for it?
Or, better yet, we could instead
make sure that there simply are no more conservatives in the
White House or Congress. Progressives, and especially
Democrats, need to regain the courage of their convictions, and
stop standing by as passive observers while these emotional
midgets with their constipated compassion capacities kick our
sorry political asses up and down the street. People don’t want
the garbage they’re selling, and just about all we have to do is
point out that it is garbage in order for it to be rejected.
Right now, regressives are
peddling a lovely mix of war, debt, environmental destruction,
torture, division at home, hatred abroad, a tattered
constitution, a shaky economy and a healthcare system in
free-fall, as well as lies and corruption that could make Imelda
herself blush. How is it these guys even exist? How is it they
are even allowed within a hundred yards of government
buildings? Is there a shortage of ankle bracelets? Even if
they were Iraqi suicide bombers blowing up government they
couldn’t begin to equal the damage they’ve already done in
government.
If emotionally-stunted
regressives can’t get to compassion on their own, maybe they can
learn from the lesson of Lee Atwater, the man whose major
contribution in life was to inject a pure and virulent fresh
dose of racism into American politics via the Willie Horton ad.
Imagine having that as the first line of your three-line obit.
(But, hey, it resulted in that really great George H. W. Bush
presidency, so it was worth it, right?) When he later got a
brain tumor, Lee at last found that elusive compassion thing and
apologized on his death bed. Like Matthew Dowd, Atwater’s
timing was impeccable. And like Dowd, his completely altruistic
absence of a motivating self-interest was plain for anyone to
see.
I don’t wish retribution on even
those who have brought harm to the rest of us, and, anyway,
surviving and then reacting to regressive policies is about as
clear a lose-lose scenario as one could possibly manufacture.
Better that we simply stand our ground, match decibel to
decibel, stratagem to stratagem, and hope that the integrity and
validity of our arguments are sufficient to win the policy
debates of the day. (And if they’re not, well, then Marx was
right: people get the government they deserve.)
There was a reason that Bush the
Monster dressed up for Halloween as a so-called compassionate
conservative in 2000. It’s the same reason that Bush Who
Spawned the Monster tried to pitch himself as a kinder, gentler
conservative in 1988. In both cases it had to be sold, because
who would believe it otherwise? Between Reagan, Gingrich and
the rest, Americans had seen the face of conservatism all too
clearly. Those who live in fear happily lined-up right behind
those who trafficked in it. Those who knew better rightly
identified this regressive conservatism for the political
carcinogen that it is. It was those in-between who could
perhaps be persuaded by such an adeptly crafted marketing
slogan.
At least Poppy Bush didn’t lie
(about that). He was actually kinder and gentler. Than
Reagan! That wasn’t exactly difficult to do. But his mutant
progeny pulled the ultimate bait-and-switch. By 2001, the
compassionate conservative of just one year earlier had become
the catastrophic conservative with which we’re all now so well
acquainted.
I will be haunted forever by
Cindy Sheehan’s description of her family’s meeting with him to
acknowledge the loss of her son, Casey. This was before Cindy
Sheehan became Cindy Sheehan. Bush comes bounding into to the
room, all frat-boy jovial and wise-cracking, asking “Okay, who’s
the mom here?”, and glibly continuing to refer to Cindy
throughout as “Mom”. The family is shocked and astonished by
his callousness. He, on the other hand, is completely unable to
make even the remotest connection to their grief, and this is
even before they would come to lay that grief at his doorstep.
They try to show him pictures of Casey and he refuses to look,
quickly withdrawing from the room, and then more famously later
refusing to meet with her at all.
This is the true face of the
regressive conservatism that has invaded our polity today, and
we should call it for what it is. Does this sound familiar?:
“a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the
rights of others”. How about this?: “having little regard for
the feeling and welfare of others”. These are defining terms
for antisocial personality disorder, better know by its
predecessor label for those so diseased: sociopath.
Note that “People with this
disorder may exhibit criminal behavior”, and symptoms may
include “not learning from experience, no sense of
responsibility, inability to form meaningful relationships,
inability to control impulses, lack of moral sense, emotional
immaturity, lack of guilt and self‑centeredness”. No kidding.
Really?
If the person in question is Cho
Seung-Hui (or Saddam Hussein) we recognize them for the
sociopaths they were, though we still happily arm them to the
teeth and miraculously express genuine surprise at the fireworks
that ensue.
But if the sociopath in question
is George W. Bush – and who can deny that he precisely fits this
definition, for no amount of Rove’s marketing magic has
prevented evidence of these symptoms from ultimately bleeding
through to our consciousness – if it is George W. Bush, then we
dress him up with all the accouterments of presidential power
and prestige and allow him to launch wars of massive
destruction, willy-nilly.
Bush has no more compassion than
does Nancy Reagan or Matthew Dowd. They, and their ilk, know
only self-interest, and if they’re ever able to miraculously
find their way to favoring stem-cell research or ending the Iraq
war it is only because they are personally affected and can
therefore begin to start imagining other people’s suffering.
But still, only on that one issue. Otherwise they remain as
oblivious – as sociopathic – as ever.
How did these people – the very
worst amongst us – come to speak for America?
David Michael Green is a
professor of political science at Hofstra University in New
York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his
articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net),
but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to
respond. More of his work can be found at his website,
www.regressiveantidote.net. “Dark of Heartness, Part I: A
Journey Into the (Reputed) Soul of Conservatism” can be found
here.
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