Hindenfreude* Ad Astra
May. 18th, 2007 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockGavin M dismantles the latest offal from John Hindraker, we begin with Hindy's premise:
We Thought they Were In Favor of Planning
One of the Democrats’ frequent talking points about Iraq is that the administration failed to plan the mission there adequately. It is ironic, then, that nearly all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have voted to bar the administration from planning for the contingency of hostilities with Iran.
Gavin says:
That squeaking noise you hear is my brain hitting itself with a little rubber mallet. It is ironic, then, that wha…?
[...]
Hinderaker is a lawyer of the incurious Dartmouth variety, and as such, he seems unable to imagine political discourse as anything but a species of litigation, in which opposing parties are expected to craft a version of reality that favors their side. Hindy’s notion of himself as an analyst (he’s a Claremont Institute fellow) isn’t about pursuing facts and insights, but about thinking up instrumental arguments to help support his imagined client, George W. Bush.
There are a lot of right-wing commentators like that, out in the gabble-and-honkosphere, but Hindy is the most like that. He’s the type specimen. And the trouble with juridical wingnuttery is that legal debate, unlike political debate, is refereed, such that you can only get away with so much sophistry and smoke-blowing before the judge tells you to stop stinking up his or her courtroom. Here, the right-wing litigators more or less run amok. Hindy’s signature means of enjoying his free-stinking privileges — his flatus operandi, as it were — is to pretend not to know things. He rarely tells outright fibs, but instead deploys a powerful tactical stupidity that’s quite distinct from the strategic and moral one that he actually possesses.
For examp, above we find a juicy plum of a Hinderakerism. He’s pretending that he has steeped himself in politics and foreign affairs these past few years without encountering the idea that the plans for the Iraq War and the subsequent occupation were intended to produce certain specified results (e.g., peace, democracy, a functioning civil society, greater safety for America) which are different from the results that actually came to pass (e.g., spiraling death, terror, and chaos; a corrupt and teetering theocratic government, greater danger to America). That is, there were plans (X), and those plans originally specified that Iraq become something different from an ungovernable warzone with mutilated corpses dumped in ditches and things blowing up all over the place (not-X). This, for the purpose of today’s argument, is news to him.
To be precise, Hinderaker affirms that he has heard of this ‘planning not adequate’ thing as a talking point frequently used by Democrats. He merely avoids the part about it being a universally-acknowledged fact, instantly verifiable via any available media and as controversial as a sigh in a summer lilac breeze. I.e., that it is the truth.
[...]
Let’s instead translate the above Hinderakerism into rational adult discourse:
One of the [problems in] Iraq is that the administration failed to plan the mission there adequately. It is [not ironic], then, that nearly all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have voted to bar the administration from planning [an even more crack-smokingly feckless and dangerous stunt, to wit: a sudden attack on] Iran.
We Thought they Were In Favor of Planning
One of the Democrats’ frequent talking points about Iraq is that the administration failed to plan the mission there adequately. It is ironic, then, that nearly all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have voted to bar the administration from planning for the contingency of hostilities with Iran.
Gavin says:
That squeaking noise you hear is my brain hitting itself with a little rubber mallet. It is ironic, then, that wha…?
[...]
Hinderaker is a lawyer of the incurious Dartmouth variety, and as such, he seems unable to imagine political discourse as anything but a species of litigation, in which opposing parties are expected to craft a version of reality that favors their side. Hindy’s notion of himself as an analyst (he’s a Claremont Institute fellow) isn’t about pursuing facts and insights, but about thinking up instrumental arguments to help support his imagined client, George W. Bush.
There are a lot of right-wing commentators like that, out in the gabble-and-honkosphere, but Hindy is the most like that. He’s the type specimen. And the trouble with juridical wingnuttery is that legal debate, unlike political debate, is refereed, such that you can only get away with so much sophistry and smoke-blowing before the judge tells you to stop stinking up his or her courtroom. Here, the right-wing litigators more or less run amok. Hindy’s signature means of enjoying his free-stinking privileges — his flatus operandi, as it were — is to pretend not to know things. He rarely tells outright fibs, but instead deploys a powerful tactical stupidity that’s quite distinct from the strategic and moral one that he actually possesses.
For examp, above we find a juicy plum of a Hinderakerism. He’s pretending that he has steeped himself in politics and foreign affairs these past few years without encountering the idea that the plans for the Iraq War and the subsequent occupation were intended to produce certain specified results (e.g., peace, democracy, a functioning civil society, greater safety for America) which are different from the results that actually came to pass (e.g., spiraling death, terror, and chaos; a corrupt and teetering theocratic government, greater danger to America). That is, there were plans (X), and those plans originally specified that Iraq become something different from an ungovernable warzone with mutilated corpses dumped in ditches and things blowing up all over the place (not-X). This, for the purpose of today’s argument, is news to him.
To be precise, Hinderaker affirms that he has heard of this ‘planning not adequate’ thing as a talking point frequently used by Democrats. He merely avoids the part about it being a universally-acknowledged fact, instantly verifiable via any available media and as controversial as a sigh in a summer lilac breeze. I.e., that it is the truth.
[...]
Let’s instead translate the above Hinderakerism into rational adult discourse:
One of the [problems in] Iraq is that the administration failed to plan the mission there adequately. It is [not ironic], then, that nearly all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have voted to bar the administration from planning [an even more crack-smokingly feckless and dangerous stunt, to wit: a sudden attack on] Iran.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-18 05:45 pm (UTC)And since we don't have the military capacity to attack Iran or anyone else, much less defend our own shores or respond to natural disasters because Bush has sent everything to Iraq.
We're in a pretty bad way. The gods help us if we do get attacked because right now we have very little in the way of defense. This is the Bush neo-con version of national defense.
I feel safer already.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-18 07:24 pm (UTC)Sure, it's gratuitously ad hominem. Is there a problem with that? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-18 07:47 pm (UTC)