Kristol Bawls

Fans of smug, mendacious propagandists for plutocracy and militarism: rejoice. William Kristol, who cannot write "get milk, rye bread" on a Post-It without doing so in bad faith, has delivered of himself a paragraph, in his quickly-becoming-self-parodistic column in the New York Times, which raises the envelope of dishonesty and stretches the bar of disingenuousness in exciting new dimensions:

The American conservative movement has been remarkably successful. We shouldn't take that success for granted. It's not easy being a conservative movement in a modern liberal democracy....

Especially when it's not remotely "conservative," but never mind. From the people who put the "con" in Neo-con comes the New Triumphalism: a whiny, self-pitying cry of victory as every element and detail of their project is revealed to have been a lie, a scam, a shakedown, a fraud, and a failure. Except, of course, for the money. Everyone -- from Rumsfeld to Cheney, from the chief commander of Blackwater to the Commander in Chief in the White House (who told the unbearable Chris Matthews, in pitch-perfect Idiot Sophomore, that he intends, as soon as he retires, to "replenish the old coffers") -- will have got their money.

What do the rest of us get? Validation: Reading Kristol, our every prejudice is confirmed. Conservatives (i.e., "movement conservatives," the neo-cons and their fellow travelers, not to be confused with actual conservatives) really are the brainy-but-repressed hyper-dorks of one's high school memory, for whom political debate is an act of revenge against reality, and feeling-right is inseparable from feeling-vindicated.

It's not easy to rally a comfortable and commercial people to assume the responsibilities of a great power.

This, with all the explicit pretension of Miss America announcing her desire to "help people," is the Neo-Con Fantasy: We are the fat, complacent beneficiaries of...dare one call it a too-successful bourgeois society? Whatever. In any case, They are the clear-eyed visionaries, who for our own good must trouble us to attend to History's summons.

Note, shown here in its native environment, the deep right-wing concern with "responsibility" as, inevitably, it applies only to others. A chicken hawk may be a chicken but, God damn it, he's also a hawk. He knows your responsibility when he sees it. Bonus points, too, for "...a great power," hinting at the favorite trope of wing-nut commentators (and hack science fiction writers) everywhere, i.e., that of the "mature society."

It's not easy to defend excellence in an egalitarian age.

Tell me about it -- especially when so many of those doing the defending -- your Kristols, your Podhoretzes, your Goldbergs and, yes, your Bellows -- are legacy hires and/or winners of the nepotism lottery.

It's not easy to encourage self-reliance in the era of the welfare state.

Here, in a mere 13 words (assuming "self-reliance" counts as one), is a book's worth of "conservative" hypocrisy and self-serving. First, the lofty moral intent, so beloved of missionaries and imperialists. Kristol has manfully taken it upon himself to encourage right behavior in others. No, don't bother thanking him. Virtue is its own reward.

But, as is always the case when reading neo-con prescriptions of how others should live, some vocab clarification proves helpful. Clip and save for future reference:

When billionaires get tax breaks, they receive "incentives." When working class families get food stamps, they're the perpetrators (and the victims, really) of "the welfare state." When government serves corporations, it's "a partnership." When government serves individuals, it's "socialism." When William Kristol rides his father's contacts and reputation to a sinecure insulated from any commercial or marketplace consequences -- and suffers not an ounce of setback for having been wrong about everything -- he's showing "self-reliance." When you ask that the FTC at least protect your children from poison in Chinese toys, you're encouraging "the nanny state." Clear?

It's not easy to make the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation, or to speak of duties in a world of rights and of honor in a nation pursuing pleasure.

"Not easy"? Dude, it's freakin' impossible. But don't blame us, man. Where was Kristol on 9/11? Didn't he hear his beloved Preznit Bush encourage us to go shopping? Even Bush -- gun-slingin', straight-talkin' neo-con hero and, therefore, exemplar of responsibility, self-reliance, and traditional virtue -- conflated "duties" with "pursuing pleasure."

We have "unpacked" barely two column inches out of 16 and a half of this smooth-faced boobie's op-ed, and already it reads like the transcript of the ravings of a schizophrenic. After seven years of sheer failure, corruption, and ineptitude, Kristol sees something "remarkably successful." In the midst of a titanic repudiation of the policies and personalities he's championed for a decade, he wags his finger and lectures us on "duties." At the head of a parade of hypocrites, criminals, and torturers, he wishes to advise us about "honor." He gazes out his paid-propagandist's office window at a country beset with anxieties about jobs, money, health, aging parents, plunging real estate values, conniving drug companies, terrorism real and imagined and hyped, permanently high gas prices, rigged elections, and the real possibility of a generation succumbing to an inescapable downward mobility, and what does he see? "A nation pursuing pleasure."

Who does he think he is? Who does he think we are? And seriously, Pinch: What would this clown have to write to make him unworthy of the Times?

Cross-posted at What HE Said.

Comments

[Kassandra]

It really doesn't matter what anyone says or believes about Kristol and the other neo-cons. They have been anything and everything but they have not been incompetent. They have achieved exactly what they set out to do...break America.

And, since this all started with Reagan (well, really Nixon) we've all had a loooong time to get used to it.

The questions here are "Can we break free?" and what do we have left to work with after the blitzkrieg of destruction of all these years of moving to the tune of Friedman economics? (sic)

[seo]

Two comments:
1) I agree with you.
2) Very nicely written. Satire that bends into sarcasm but isn't funny is a sad affair. This is funny and exactly to the point. Your mother is almost surely proud of you, but she's your mother, after all. Your uncles should be proud of you too.
SEO

[hyjanks]

Under the heading "It Can't Get Any Better Than This", I'm eagerly awaiting the Karl, Koulter & Kristol Hour (during prime time on Fox, ideally). It could be a take-off on 60 Minutes, with segments exploring, for instance, the surge-induced peace fest in Iraq. On another segment they could present charts and graphs (secretly drawn by blind lemurs) depicting "the true state of the economy".
The last part of the show could feature the hosts faking participation in a full orchestra, perhaps playing some of Wagner's works (you know, the ones Hitler was so enamored with).
We're talkin' top ten material here, folks!

[Stirner]

Kristol is NOT a conservative -- he is a NEO-Conservative along the lines of Wolfowitz, Pearle, and Podhoretz.­.

[urbanrevolt]

Ellis, that was great!

Kristol should be put in the Bronx Zoo with his cage tagged for "The American Aristocrat­."

Worthless for everything, except what he gets paid for... Which he's much worse at.

Monty-Python called the British varieties "Twits."

[davegnyc]

Thank you for a great column. Kristol is as close to pure evil as it gets.

Yeah, you got frat boys and dorks falsely dragged up in this, but I think people know what your talking about.

Truth is, he is a paranoid that has somehow been enabled to use our government, fox news and the NYT as forms of psychotherapy.

How that happened is another story, but we need to stop the madness now.

[TOLFTRP]

Self - reliant? Rate cuts!! Free money! Rate cuts and more rate cuts! Buy our bad mortgages! Etc. Welfare for me and not for thee.

[Oldsalt]

Kristol BAWLS? Surely, that's a misprint!

[traveler501]

Brilliantly expressed.­..you have infinitely more patience with this drivel than I do...but the clarity, and contempt, you express are priceless.

[lastams]

Once again I have to ask how the far right of the Republican Party were able to appropriate the term “conservative”? To the best of my knowledge, conservatism denotes a belief in small government, personal freedoms, checks and balances, oversight, you know, the Constitution and all that.
What are being called conservatives are people who support a unitary executive allowed to thumb its nose at Congress and the Courts, a bloated secretive bureaucracy that cannot pass an audit, and the elimination of pesky laws like the Presidential Records Act, the Hatch Act, the Fisa Act, and the Freedom of Information act (whose requests will soon be channeled through the DOD, where there is NO funding to meet the requests).
The far right of the Republican Party are NOT conservatives, they are Nationalists, and it would not be an altogether bad thing to see the Party reorganize under their former edicts.
How far have the goal posts been moved when John McCain isn’t considered conservative enough?
One should remember that Barry Goldwater, MR CONSERVATIVE, was pro-choice.
Today he wouldn’t be allowed on a Republican stage.
Because McCain hasn’t followed in lockstep with the Whitehouse program 100 percent of the time (only 90 percent), he’s been branded a traitor to his party. The Kristols, and Coulters and Limbaughs cannot tolerate someone with actual principals who may seek to kill the golden goose; billions and billions in government contracted fraud.
But eventually the loudest pundits will come around; I mean whom else will they have once McCain gets the nomination? Do you think any of them will support a third party out of principal?
Please, these people know where their bread is buttered, down at the RNC.
The problem is simply that it is difficult to change gears in all the slime they’ve been spewing.
But they’re good at it … and let’s face it, they cater to an audience with a very short attention span.

[mamacat]

On behalf of past repressed high school dorks, I resent your assertion that we become neo-cons. I do not claim to understand what makes a person choose to abandon principle and become a self-agrandising traitor to humanity, but such people have existed throughout history. Whether they called themselves Nazis, Communists, or Neo-cons, they turn their backs on their fellow human beings, and claim that they are pursueing a higher purpose when they subjugate, denigrate, and conquer those with less power.
But please, do not insult the dorks of the world.

[abroadabroad]

I for one am glad the New York Times hired Kristol. While they may be forced to suffer a certain amount of ridicule, they have enough pretty darn good columnists to make it easy not to bother reading him, and printing his drivel in their otherwise more or less respectable pages does the country a great service.

He is by comparison so sub-par that finally a light is being shown on his exceptional mediocrity. Anyone who wanders into the New York Times looking for William Kristol will be walking into someone else's house, where William Kristol is a barely tolerated poor cousin. I can't imagine any self-respecting New York Times reader openly admitting to reading his column. And so his poorly considered decision to accept this gig may very well mean the beginning of his own irrelevance.

[whatsthatsound]

You know what I wish? I wish the movie "Trading Places" would become a real, actual event for this guy. Remember the smug, spoiled rich white guy that Dan Akroyd played, and how he wound up penniless (while Eddie Murphy took over his Wall Street job and all its perks)?
Of course, unlike the surprisingly resourceful character Akroyd played, Billy would not last one minute out of his playpen reality that coddles and protects him. I just remember how he nearly fell apart when Steve Colbert grilled him.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I disagree, I think you've got a difference between conservative and neo-con, or neo-scam, or whatever you want to call the ugliness behind the high wierdness that's shaped our policy as a country for the last 8 years. I think it looks a lot more like people trying to pull answers out of their back pockets rather than a bona-fide philosophy or strategy, seat-of-your-pants stuff, amateur night all day long. IF they'd been real conservatives, we'd be at 3 trillion in debt instead of 9. But, everyone wants money, and everyone's got lobbyists, everyone's got this or that or the other, and it's such lunacy it's not even funny.
Nor are the liberals true to their colors, and hand in hand, they've kind of proceeded down the happy road to fascism without a second thought, well maybe with, but still a Big Joke.

[willo]

Good analysis of [Hitler junior] Crystal writing. And done with witt and humor. Good job.