I feel compelled to comment over this recent repulsive display from the right-wing media over the Rush Limbaugh "phony soldiers" comment and the SCHIP veto but I hardly know where to begin. These people are just about the most despicable, self-serving and ugly Americans I have ever seen, and there appears to be absolutely no line they won't cross in service of their agenda, which seems to be nothing more than the total demonization of anyone, anywhere who disagrees with them. Here's a video clip of VoteVets.org Vice President Brandon Friedman reading some hate mail his organization has received from Limbaugh's listeners. You can read some of them here, if you wish. The common theme is that a phony soldier is one who does not unquestioningly and uncritically submit to an authority figure's interpretation of the war, whether it is Rush LImbaugh, George Bush or General Petraeus. Any deviation from the authority's interpretation sends their followers, as near as I can tell from these examples, into a complete frenzy. They are livid. Incoherent. Violent. I don't know what psychological impulse is behind this behavior, or what transpired over the course of their lives to make them so intolerant of reasoned dissent, but one thing is clear: they are lost. They are beyond persuasion, beyond spirited debate, beyond even empathy. Deviation from their belief system triggers in them an instinctual need to attack and to destroy their perceived enemies.

I don't intend this to be a cheap exercise in pop psycho-babble, and generally speaking, I find such explanations of what's called authoritarian behavior to be unsatisfying. Yet we must acknowledge that something is motivating these people, and it is something deeply irrational. That, as near as I can tell, puts us squarely in psychological territory and while I am unqualified to make up a profile of this personality type, I offer my observations as a way of setting the boundaries of the discussion. Ultimately, however, I don't wish to focus on the followers but their leaders, the authority figures they rely on and rally around. In the case of someone like Rush Limbaugh, who has been at this game for close to 20 years, it's clear to me that he has found a formula for success that has since been copied by by every one of his imitators. One can't say for certain whether Limbaugh actually believes his own fantasies or whether he is simply an immoral self-serving cynic, but I'm inclined to lean towards the former interpretation. Certainly he relishes in his own success and power and that propels him but it also, I suspect, numbs him to his own conscience, which somewhere in his blackened heart tells him that he is exploiting people for profit; both his listeners who hang on his every word like revealed truth and the subjects of his tirades. Obviously that voice is all but silent in Limbaugh who I suspect takes his own success as a validation of his extreme beliefs. After all, it isn't the type of work you do that counts, it's whether you're successful at it or not. Losers vote for Democrats. And he's a winner, even though his trade is nothing more than propaganda.

For the hardcore right-wing movement conservatives I'm looking at here, the military, like the media, is simply a tool to be manipulated. If soldiers voice concern over their mission, they're traitors. If they question the war as veterans, they're phony. Most of the time, the mainstream news media is little more than an American Pravda for the right-wing, indistinguishable from communist propaganda. Except when they help the conservative cause. I don't recall hearing anyone complaining about "liberal bias" when virtually every significant news source in the country uncritically supported George Bush's ill-conceived war of choice in Iraq. They were towing the line and hence not the enemy but enablers. Of course, now that they are a bit more critical, their status has been returned to that of socialist liberal traitors who enable the eventual takeover of America by the Islamofascist hordes massing around Iran's revolutionary regime. Or something like that. But the key dynamic should not be forgotten: right-wing agrees with news story = good, right-wing disagrees with news story = traitors. Theirs is not a coherent critique of the news media but rather an unspoken acknowledgment that the news media are merely tools for the movement that can fall in and out of favor in an instant, at which point the narrative of the embattled and underrepresented conservative alternative media comes in.

Every conservative media figure plays this game; no matter the actual circumstances of the media environment, conservatives always portray themselves as the victims of a liberal establishment that shuts out alternative views and stifles honest debate. And although they're all guilty of this, I think Michelle Malkin stands out. For one thing, Malkin represents the face of modern, disingenuous conservatism. She, first of all, is a woman, and a woman of foreign ancestry. She is young and, dare I say, hip. She's an internet personality who in addition to her personal blog, has taken to "vlogging" and other collaborative internet media ventures. She also, as a modern pundit, cross-pollinates in the publishing and cable news media environments which gives her additional gravitas. My argument is that all this is simply a smokescreen. Success for her, unlike Limbaugh, is not a matter of ideological self-validation. It is rather a way of telling herself that she is mainstream and a serious journalist when in fact she is a peddler of hated and thuggery. She can deny all this by an avalanche of heavily-hyperlinked blog posts to obscure debate over small factual matters which, when added up, amount to her being little more than a serial liar. No, she claims, I am a journalist, and then she turns the tables by suggesting her critics are stalking her, rather than the other way around.

Because of this heavy obfuscation, what Malkin does and the tactics she employs become lost to all but those who are well-entrenched in daily (these days, hourly) political news from the New York Times to the lowliest blogs. Thus, while efforts to call her out on her lies and tactics are noble and the correct response, it is doubtful she would consent, given the style of politics she employs, which would amount to accusations of being "unfairly" treated and undoubtedly a reference to one of her dense blog posts so we can restart the debate all over again. It seems, frankly, futile to engage such a person on the merits because she isn't playing that game. In fact, Ezra Klein, the blogger who called Malkin out, should realize this. He himself wrote the day before

This is not politics. This is, in symbolism and emotion, a violent group ritual. It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy. It is the group reminding itself that the Other is always disingenuous, always evil, always lying, always pitiful and pathetic and grotesque. It is a bonding experience -- the collaborative nature of these hateful orgies proves that much -- in which the enemy is exposed as base and vile and then ripped apart by the community. In that way, it sustains itself, each attack preemptively justifying the next vicious assault, justifying the whole hateful edifice on which their politics rest.

And that is why I find it so difficult to write about this subject--it isn't about politics. It defies the tools of cool, rational and informed analysis. The Malkins and Limbaughs may ultimately help a political cause by being the mercenaries who profit off the conflict, but they are essentially apolitical. What drives them is more than money and power and ego: it is an identity. An identity of being both within--in the conservative populist fashion--the group being wronged from without while at the same time being a leader charging forth, sword in hand, moral certainly never in question. A Kossack echoes this notion:

It's long past time for people to stop treating Fox-style, Malkin-style, Limbaugh-style conservatism as merely a "political" phenomenon. It may once have been, but it isn't now. As of this millennium, it's nothing but a hate movement with neckties. Protofascism with bright, patriotic logos. Stop treating it with anything but revulsion and disdain. Stop pretending for even a bare moment that they are anything more than thugs (emphasis in original).

That, I think, should be the proper response from anyone who considers him or herself as part of the Left. If a part of our identity is to cherish the rule of law above vigilantism, then we should be labeling the Malkins and Limbaughs and countless others as thugs. And the bit about neckties is simply an acknowledgment of how mainstreamed these views have become. Once-respectable news organizations now regularly lower themselves into the sewer for "insight" from these professionalized thugs. How else to explain the bizarre continuing presence of Glenn Beck, whose shtick appears to be that of an ignorant bigot supposedly echoing the sentiments of the everyman. I don't know what is more insulting: the spectacle of a professional xenophobe posing as a newsman or the fact that the people who hired Beck think that he really does represent average Americans (his rating suggest otherwise). Isn't the news supposed to inform us? Dare I say, enlighten us? This is what CNN considers informative?

Iran has long been the puppet master in the Middle East. You don't have to take my word for it. Just watch any episode of Law & Order. Use the thinking, you know, that helps them solve all the tough cases. Iran has the means, the motive, and the opportunity to try and destroy our American way of life by controlling the Middle East.

Since 1979, they have been orchestrating a coalition to wipe us off the face of the Earth and establish their psychotic extremist regime. It is time for us to stop sending diplomats to reason with warrior chess players.

And it goes on like that. These are paranoid delusions or cheap fear-mongering for ratings. Either way, they are not befitting of an organization purporting itself to be the "Most Trusted Name in News." And we certainly don't need anymore racial profiling from Beck when all Americans should be gravely concerned about the Bush administration's intentions towards Iran (to say nothing of the broader Middle East).

It is irresponsible to treat Limbaugh, Malkin and Beck with any degree of professional respect. Their views are radical and extreme, their followers are comprised of unstable loons, and their common theme is premised on treating America as some sort of battleground for ideological, racial and political purity--a minority view, I might add, and not even close to achieving any sort of consensus in this country. Iraq and SCHIP (I'm using it here as a proxy for health care) are the most important issues to Americans. And in each case a clear majority, backed for the most part by the Democratic party, desires change. Substantive change. And in each case a vocal minority, whether filibustering Republicans in the Senate or conservative media activists, are hysterically waging war against that majority opinion using every despicable weapon at their command. Struggling families, infirmed children, war veterans--none of these are too sacred for the rabid right-wing not to attack mercilessly. And this country needs to come to terms with that. Powerful people with audiences need to fearless denounce these thugs for who they are and shrug off any threats that result. The radicals need to be marginalized because their self-imposed alienation makes it impossible to reconcile them with the rest of the country whose political values actually cherish debate instead of mindless mob justice. Everyone cheers when the bully's bubble of authority is finally popped. That moment can't come soon enough.