Orc logic

Sometimes I wish we bloggers on the Left would just ignore those on the Right.  There's no gain in it.  A moment or two of easy feelings of moral and intellectual superiority bracketed by a lot of frustration, anger, and utter dismay that people of such low standards and stunted emotional growth command a hearing and boast large, loyal followings.

We know what they are, and there's no arguing with them.

It's not just their illogic, their mean-spiritedness, their placing of anything that looks like a fact out of bounds.  Not just their many and varied hypocrisies and their ability to change opinions at the drop of a hat---or a nod from Karl Rove---totally contradicting what they were ready to go to the wall for only last week if that's what serves the Agenda this week.

And it's not just that they really don't represent anything in themselves.  They are no more responsible for the "ideas" they spout than a secretary running the Xerox machine is responsible for what's in the latest memo from the boss.

It's not just all that.

It is their bloody evil-mindedness.

They think like the squabbling orcs in The Two Towers who start a conversation cursing the elf warrior they've imagined has left the paralyzed Frodo to be eaten by Shelob---"regular elvish trick"---and finish it laughing about the time they left a paralyzed comrade to be eaten by Shelob.

"D'you remember old Ufthak?  We lost him for days.  Then we found him in a corner; hanging up he was, but he was wide awake and glaring. How we laughed!  She'd forgotten him, maybe, but we didn't touch him---no good interfering with Her..."

Orc-like they hate in their enemies what they love in themselves. Or, in other words, what they hate most is catching sight of themselves in mirrors of their own devising that they have fumblingly held up to their own faces.

The orcs are at it with Cindy Sheehan, hating her for making them confront the reflections of their own chickenhawkery and political hackishness.

She's using her son's death for political ends!  Regular elvish trick!  How dare anybody use something like a war to advance their own political cause!

How can you argue with such intellectual perversity?  Much better, I often think, to pay them no mind and stick to attacking and arguing with their leaders who are at least out in the open and caught on the public record making stupid, perverse, and evil arguments for their losing War.

Leaders like Sen. George Allen who says that the President should meet with Cindy Sheehan and in answer to her questions tell her that her son died a hero.

Well, she knows her son's a hero, you fatuous windbag!   She's already proud of her son!  She was proud of him and thought he was a hero while he was alive!  She wants to know why he isn't alive.  She wants to know why the President feels it was necessary for her son to become a dead hero instead of leaving him alone to go on being a live hero to her. And the Freedom, Democracy, War on Terror bullshit will not answer her, because she's heard it and she knows it to be lies!  What she wants is for the President to admit he lied, or at least that he goofed.  She doesn't want to hear him continue to lie, hear him promise to continue to screw-up and kill other mothers' sons and daughters!

She doesn't want an empty-hearted sermon, Senator.  She wants an honest answer.

Which she knows Bush can't give.

So I'd rather focus on the likes of George Allen, and George Bush, and Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice.  I'd rather focus on the real writers in the real media, and forget about people who think that calling themselves Hindrocket makes them sound macho and cool.

But it's like saying a virus is a virus and will be a virus no matter what, so we should just ignore it and leave it alone to be a virus.  Can't do it.  We hold the vaccine.  We can put up the signs that say This House is Quarantined Until Reason and Sanity are Restored.

(Plus, if we all gave it up we'd lose out on the pleasure of reading Roy Edroso's summarizations of their latest madhattery.  For instance, here's Roy catching the Right Wing Intellectual types' new strategy for regaining public support for their war:  "When I want your opinion, I'll tell it to you!")

The main trope in the attacks on Cindy Sheehan is the image of her dead hero son hanging his head in shame over what she's doing.

(Our Pepper pinches her nose and holds up a good example by the tail.  The Heretik lifts a rock and finds another one by a nitwit calling himself the Confederate Yankee.  Funny what these people are proud of.)

Forget the illogic of invoking the old "so and so is turning over in his grave" cliche in this case.  The behavior meant to be shamed would not be necessary if that so and so was alive to condemn it.  If Casey Sheehan was alive to scold his mother for camping out in Crawford she would not be camping out in Crawford.

Forget also the childishness of it, the way talking about Casey Sheehan as if he was alive saves them from having to face the fact of his death, of Death itself.  Soldiers don't die, they just take up residency in Vallhalla.  We don't have to mourn them.  We don't have to question why they died.  They're happy there!  They want to be there! O Death where is thy sting, and mommy, leave the light on, please?

And forget the narcissism of it, the way they are admiring and congratulating themselves by imagining that Sheehan would be automatically on their side, the way they are feeling tough and brave by identifying with a dead hero, the way they refuse to imagine the ghost of Casey Sheehan turning to those among them young enough to serve and demanding to know, "Why weren't you there with me?  Why didn't you have my back?"

Forget all that and look at the orckish evil mindedness of their assuming that a son would turn on his mother because of her political opinions.

You see the mirror they're holding up?  Loyalty to the right political idea---to their idea---trumps all, family loyalty and a son's love for his mother included.

What's reflected in that mirror are people who have no respect for anything, not a dead solider, not a mother's grief, certainly not truth, not even themselves, no respect for anything but an idea.

The idea being that George Bush does no wrong.

Orcs terrified of the Nazgul aren't any more slavish to the Eye.

(Cross-posted on the American Street.)

Comments

[Campaspe]

When I saw the opening, I thought, "he's been reading them rant about poor Cindy Sheehan" well before I reached your nut graf. Well, Lance, you're a gentleman. Those who have your dander up would no doubt go on at great length about feminism eroding respect. Maybe they'd stand up when a woman arrived at the table. But for Cindy Sheehan, they have nothing but venom and amazing clairvoyance regarding what her dead son would have wanted.

They have a right to say she's grandstanding and disagree with her protest. But can't they give her even the small concession of dignified disagreement? Can they not correct her, but still stand up when a grieving mother is present?

[jeff Boatright]

Excellent analogy and summation.

[Anne Laurie]

This post (no, essay) is so well-thought-out and constructed that it's left me speechless... no small achievement! Thanks, Lance!

[res publica]

"We know what they are, and there's no arguing with them."

Amen, Brother Lance. One variety of liberal response of which I've grown particularly tired is the "look at this fresh Republican hypocrisy I've exposed!" maneuver. Republicans are hypocrites?!? Well no shit. It's more trenchant to point out that their professed positions are batshit-crazy. I do not admire people who consistently live out and apply their crazy ideas. At this point, the GOP is pretty open about its own corruption and intellectual bankruptcy. Hypocrisy is sort of beside the point when confronted with such vast, brazen error.

[Samuel]

I have to second Anne there. It left me commentless, when I read it earlier.

Despair slowly overtakes Samuel as he laments reading Lance before posting about Cindy Sheehan. His thoughts are irreparably influenced by this post for his post to be anything but a derivative or worse an imitation of this great piece.

"The idea being that George Bush does no wrong." I was naive enough to think the USA was better than that. My state in India has a tradition of electing movie stars as chief minsters (the US equivalent, being governor) and there is intense hero worship over there.Loyalty is to the leader and I doubt many people even know what their ideology is.

I was arguing with my father about how such shit could not happen in the USA (this was during Clinton's first term, when I was a teen, convinced that I was correct in a way only teens can be) when my father gently pointed out that Reagan was an actor himself and that he was not even the biggest star in his prime.

I must say that it came as a rude shock. I had thought people here were better than that and that image did not count here. I was not here during Reagan's presidency, so I can only wonder if he inspired such devotion.

Going by the adulation Reagan received after his death, I am sure Bush is going to be beatified as a statesman who brought democracy to the Mid East.

[Agi T. Prop]

Lance, you are brilliant.

[Exiled in NJ]

It takes my breath away, and I am not talking about your wonderful piece, but the sheer effrontery of these Eddie Slovik's who believe in their 'cause' down to the last young American killed, as long as it isn't one of them. I'm off my wavelength; comparing them with the WWII private is an insult to Slovik's memory. Where is Joseph Welch when we really need him?

[Night Bird]

Lance,

Loyalty to orckish evil mindedness is what the neo-cons view in that mirror.

And Agi beat me to it - Brilliant!

[Amanda]

Wow, I'm stunned. So right, so right. After reading the daily trolling at my blog, I'm scared about how right you are.

[coturnix]

WOW!

[Anne Laurie]

Orwellian language watch: The CBS Nightly News appended a few seconds on Cindy Sheehan as part of their regular "Iraq Still Totally SNAFU'ed" feature. During those seconds, they delicately referred to Bush as "headquartering in Crawford" for the next few weeks. Is this the new Oval Office euphemism? Heck, Bush's "Rust Never Sleeps But I Get Five Weeks' Summer Vacation Tour" has been a gift to the tv comedians every August, and it never bothered his handlers before! Maybe it's not so easy to shrug off the jokes when the approval rating are bumping south almost as fast as gas prices are bumping north?

[mac macgillicuddy]

I like the post, Lance. But I just have to add one thing, because of a conversation I had the other day with a friend over lunch.

His son is in Iraq. His daughter was there, too, although thankfully she is now home and, besides being mad as hell, is in one piece.

My friend made this observation regarding the hero tripe. He said his daughter and his son are not heros. They are his children and, except inasmuch as any father sees his kids as "heros," he does not want them portrayed that way -- especially not when hero becomes a euphemism, which he says he thinks it has become.

We owe it to ourselves to be careful of using the word hero the way the media is using it and the way the political rhetoric uses it.

The people who "gave their lives for their country," my friend points out, did not GIVE their lives. They were killed. Pure and simple. They had their lives taken from them. They are not heros. They are dead.

This is from my friend, whose children have served in Iraq -- one of whom is in the Coast Guard and certainly never imagined he'd find himself guarding that coast.

Just thought it was worth passing this on. As long as war is glorified by calling everyone who goes there a hero, we will be vulnerable to bamboozling by this White House and others to come.

Incidentally, MoveOn.org reports that mothers of dead soldiers are flying into Crawford from all over the country. If this is true, it just might smoke George out. How can he ignore such a committee of heros?

[carla]

Truely an outstanding piece of writing, Lance. Your analogies put the picture in my mind of Hindrocket the Orc...drooling and oozing his stenchified drivel. Well done.

I wish they could be ignored as well. Unfortunately when they're ignored..they become like the Swift Boaters, an echo chamber whose voice grows as long as it isn't pushed back against.

[mac macgillicuddy]

Here is a relevant link.

[Chuck, Left Of Left]

Wow! Now that was very well said- telling it like it is personified!

[harry near indy]

well said, lance. congratulations of that post and several others you've written since you came back from vacation.

I guess the vacation did your writing a world of good.

[Lance]

Thanks, folks. But the only really brilliant thing I did for this post was read all the great stuff being written about Cindy Sheehan on other people's blogs. The Heretik, Shakespeare's Sister and Blue Girl, besides good stuff of their own, have the links.

Mac,

You've probably heard me mention the boys' Uncle Merlin. His regular FedEx guy came into the shop the other day. His daughter's on her to Mosul to drive a tanker truck. Another way of saying she's going to be driving a very big target. FedEx guy does not want a heroine for a daughter. He wants just a regular daughter, here, home, now.

Carla, you're right, there's no ignoring them. But they are maddening to argue with. For one thing, you can't get them to address any points you raise. They fall back on repeating their original idea, the one you've just shot full of holes, except that maybe they'll rephrase it or add swear words. There's a guy showed up in the comments on this post at the American Street. What's one of my points? The narcissism of identifying themselves with the dead heroes in order to make themselves feel tough. What's he lead with? "We" need to get our hands dirty. "We" need to stand tall. We, we, we. I don't know, maybe he was posting from Basra and just forgot to mention it.

[Tilli (Mojave Desert)]

Thanks, Lance.

[quixote]

Lance- great post!

mac macgillicuddy: right on about the (over)use of "hero." And also about your use of it at the end of your comment.

I don't have the stomach to notice what the orcs are doing, so I didn't even realize they were spewing this sort of stuff at a parent of a fallen soldier. What's happened to us? Has even a member of the SS ever done something like that?

[Charles Watkins]

Hey, quit sliming us Orcs. At least we don't lie about why we go to war! -Muglug

[Marvin Drake`]

As a proud WWII Infantry Repalacement Rifleman sent to Europe in the spring of 1945, I know something of what went on at that time. Eddie's execution was the army's most shameful official act, ever. As reprehensible as Eddie's dumb scheme was, those who were truly responsible for what was done to him did worse. Poor Eddie did not appreciate the adage we all heard in basic training, "the army may not be able to make you do something, but it can sure make you sorry you didn't". I am not against the death penalty, and there were many who deserved it so much more than Eddie did. He only was able to threaten desertion, they had him all the time. The mind set of the army brass at that time was such that the life of a lowly Infantry Private was of no more consequence than that of a bug smashed on the sidewalk, and woe to those who dared to challenge them. His execution was nothing more than a ritualized human sacrifice to the swagger-stick carrying gods from West Point. Marvin Drake, T/3 (Staff Sgt Tech) Infantry, US Army, 1943-46.

[fred preuss]

I thought it was creepy when people tried to get us to call her "Mother Sheehan".