Sid the Squid on Iraq

Sid Blumenthal, erstwhile and perhaps future Clintonista hit man, now writes for Salon and the Guardian and is still spouting his left-wing venom. He has a piece in Der Spiegel today in which he argues:

1) Bush's critics are "truth-tellers."

2) Bush's stubborn refusal to admit defeat in Iraq is destroying the Republican Party and will lead to Democrat triumphs in the future.

3) Public opinon has turned decisively against the war and will not change in the future.

4) Bush and Republican leaders are lying to the public and obstructing investigations that would reveal those lies.

5) Bush may not be Hitler, but he is a Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who blamed German defeat in WWI on a "stab in the back" by opposition politicians.

6) Newt Gingrich is a spokesman for the administration when he declares that the Bush's real enemy is "the Democrats." [it's a joke, guy!]

7) With their lies, Bush and the Republicans are trying to rewrite history.

Read it here.

All this sounds to me a lot like psychological projection.

It is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who have embraced the Fuhrerprincip of devotion to a single figure who through force of will can solve all problems. They, not Republicans, are given to conspiracy theories. They, far more than the administration, are engaged in the rewriting of recent history.

I once attended a lecture by Gordon Wood in which he discussed the conspiratorial mindset of many American revolutionaries. He made the point that in a world where authority flows from the top down -- were a few key individuals make decisions that affect everything and everyone -- conspiracy theories are a reasonable representation of the way things work and therefore appropriate. Think, for instance, of pre-Revolutionary France, or (Wood's point) the administration of the British colonial system.

Wood's argument provides some insight into how the Democrats see the modern world.

The Democrats' longing for a great man [or woman] to lead them back to power and their propensity to see conspiracy everywhere reveals a deeper, darker aspect of their weltanschaaung. They really do think that authority flows downward from the top down through bureaucratic channels and that a few strong individuals "the best and the brightest", properly placed, can through the force of their will shape history to their desires.

They think history can be managed. So can the public. Public opinion to them is infinitely malleable and can be managed and manipulate if only their leaders can find the right words and symbols. History is something to be shaped through effective manipulation of symbols.

This is scary stuff, but it is what the Democrat Party has come to stand for.

This worldview is a profound repudiation of democratic principles. At the best it is "aristocratic" nonsense; at the worst it is "fascist" and dangerous. Whatever its form, though, it is entirely inappropriate to a democratic polity.

It is no surprise that the Democrats should have so little faith in the spread of democracy in the Middle East. They have no faith in it here in America.

And, lest I be misunderstood, I'm not saying the Democrats are Nazis. They're more like the Bourbons.