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2007-03-16 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by ryuge 2007-03-16 06:49|| || Front Page|| [5 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 f there's a diagnosis to be made here, it is this: yet another case of the one other syndrome I have been credited with identifying, a condition that addles the brain of otherwise normal journalists and can strike without warning Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant.

Ouch! That Hammer hits hard!

Posted by Mike 2007-03-16 06:57|| 2007-03-16 06:57|| Front Page Top

#2 It's true, I can never remember journalists and liberals behaving so badly in my lifetime. I'm in my mid 30's and these last 5 years have been the weirdest in my life.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2007-03-16 08:34|| 2007-03-16 08:34|| Front Page Top

#3 quick notes

1. note Kraut is a trained psychiatrist, IIUC

2. This isnt the old TNR. Peretz sold it, though he still writes a column. Its no longer the voice of hawkish liberalism. Im not sure what, aside from a somewhat more contrarian style, differentiates it from say the Atlantic Monthly. At some point the Iraq war will be history, and the nadir of the liberal hawks will pass, and there will be a need for a liberal hawkish voice again. But it wont be found in TNR again, I suspect.

Posted by liberalhawk 2007-03-16 09:19|| 2007-03-16 09:19|| Front Page Top

#4 Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds made a very apt off-the-cuff remark last week. He said we need to have the Muslims seriously attack Russia (Beslan wasn't enough). If they did that, all the Communists in the U.S. would get on board supporting the WoT just like they did the last time Russia was seriously attacked--in 1941. If the Commies all got on board, this would be "the next good war," just like WWII was "the last good war."

I know it was TIC but a lot of truth is said in jest.

Posted by Mac 2007-03-16 09:23|| 2007-03-16 09:23|| Front Page Top

#5 of course since cottle isnt a communists, and AFAIK is not a Putin fan, its hardly relevant to this.

Posted by liberalhawk 2007-03-16 09:27|| 2007-03-16 09:27|| Front Page Top

#6 Cottle is following a long tradition of hard-left medicine and psychiatry, best expressed in the old Soviet Union but certainly employed elsewhere. If your opponent stands firmly against you and rejects everything you say, there are only two potential reasons why: 1) he's evil 2) he's ill (that you could be wrong is not a potential reason, of course).

And since Ms. Cottle wants to be 'compassionate', she thinks Cheney is ill, not evil. What other explanation could there be? That's why she wrote what to you and me appears to be total tripe.

She's serious. She believes this. This isn't just rattling the conservative cage, or red meat to both her readers. She believes this.

That's one good reason why the hard Left is dangerous. If you think your opponents are evil, you kill them. If you think they're mentally ill, you lock them up. That's where Ms. Cottle is going with this.

Enjoy your cell, ~~comrades~~ citizens.

Posted by Steve White">Steve White 2007-03-16 11:24|| 2007-03-16 11:24|| Front Page Top

#7 "Cottle is following a long tradition of hard-left medicine and psychiatry, best expressed in the old Soviet Union but certainly employed elsewhere. If your opponent stands firmly against you and rejects everything you say, there are only two potential reasons why: 1) he's evil 2) he's ill (that you could be wrong is not a potential reason, of course)."

And its only the left that does this? Only the "moonbats", the "loonies" etc? Heck, its not only done to lefties, its done to someone as conservative as John McCain whos regularly called "crazy". Not to mention all the crazy and evil furriners. If we had to eliminate every reference to someone as crazy or evil, this here website would have a lot less content.

And no, I dont know of anything as "serious" as the Cottle piece in the other direction, but then i havent looked.

Posted by liberalhawk 2007-03-16 13:11|| 2007-03-16 13:11|| Front Page Top

#8 BTW, steve, you will note that in #3 i did not defend Cottle.

I took issue with #4, which seemed to imply that Cottle would stop saying stuff like this if only the muslims attacked Russia.

Note - X used rhetorical strategy A, and Y used rhetorical strategy A, does not mean Y is a friend of X.

Even if Cottle was equivalent to the Commies in what shes saying about Cheney (and note, shes only speculating, not calling for him to be confined to a mental hospital - we are still free to speculate about our leaders mental states in this country) it would NOT imply that she has any special concern for Russia (if Russia were actually Communist, which it is not)

If that WERE a logical form of argument, you could argue that since the Nazis attacked their opponents as Communists, everyone here attacking Ms Cottele is a Nazi. That would be just as absurd, IMO.

But it does raise the question of why its so despicable of Ms Cottle to say a public official is mentally ill on thin grounds, when its OK to call Ms Cottle a Communist on equally thin grounds. Does Ms Cottle beleive in the abolition of private property? In the lead role of a proletarian party? In dialectical materialism? Does anyone here know, or even care?

Or is that anyone who thinks Cheney is "bad", or perhaps not "bad" but mentally ill, is a commie? Thats a pretty expansive definition of commie. More so, perhaps, than Ms Cottels definition of "mentally ill"

Posted by liberalhawk 2007-03-16 13:21|| 2007-03-16 13:21|| Front Page Top

#9 LH, I wouldn 't (and didn't) call Ms. Cottle a communist. She's a leftist. That seems rather obvious.

As to old Joe McCarthy and the HUAC, there's a difference between calling someone 'crazy' (an epithet) and 'mentally ill' (a diagnosis with sinister implications). Heck, I call lots of folks 'crazy' even if I can't find a description of them in the DSM-IV ;-)

Ms. Cottle is calling Mr. Cheney mentally ill without calling for him to be locked up, because right now she can't do the latter. There's still too much blowback. Let things go as she might wish, however, and in time the psychiatric facilities will be just as full as they were in Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

Posted by Steve White">Steve White 2007-03-16 15:28|| 2007-03-16 15:28|| Front Page Top

#10 "Ms. Cottle is calling Mr. Cheney mentally ill without calling for him to be locked up, because right now she can't do the latter. There's still too much blowback. Let things go as she might wish, however, and in time the psychiatric facilities will be just as full as they were in Brezhnev's Soviet Union."

Might wish. Excellent. She might wish it. She also might wish to have Jews lined up and shot. Or she might wish for a manned mission to Saturn.

If someone speculates whether someone in politics has a low IQ, does that mean they want them sterilized, a la eugenics? If you speculate if someone is gay, does that imply you support them being hanged, like in some muslim countries?

I know people who im quite sure are diagnosible according to the DSM IV (and of course seeing at the estimable book includes depression, and even, IIUC, dysthimia, as categories of mental illness, I fail to see that its such a huge deal being mentally ill) That doesnt mean I want them locked up. As for Ms Cottle being a leftist, she clearly thinks Cheneys policies are miserable. Does that put her on a spectrum to Stalinism? No more so than liking Cheney puts one on a spectrum to Nazism. Hell, someone with views like my own is probably on a spectrum in BOTH directions.

So I cant see how her being a "leftist" is relevant, if shes not a communist. Garden variety liberals and even socialists are not historically more in favor of psychiatry as a tool of repression ttan are conservatives (they may use it more as a tool of propaganda, as Kraut points out - but thats hardly the same thing, and is probably just taking advantage of many Pdocs being liberals - just as say, taking a poll of Marines, or economists, could be used against liberals)

Obviously some libertarians are even more opposed to "coercive psychiatry" than are either liberals or most conservatives, but IMHO they go to far.

Posted by liberalhawk 2007-03-16 16:35|| 2007-03-16 16:35|| Front Page Top

#11 BTW, my strong impression is that Winston Churchill WAS bipolar. Didnt mean he should have been locked up. Far from it, his manic phases may well have saved western civilization.

Posted by liberalhawk 2007-03-16 16:38|| 2007-03-16 16:38|| Front Page Top

#12 #2 It's true, I can never remember journalists and liberals behaving so badly in my lifetime. I'm in my mid 30's and these last 5 years have been the weirdest in my life.
They hated Reagan as much or even more. Thought he was too dumb to breath, a cowboy, etc.

BTW, my strong impression is that Winston Churchill WAS bipolar
Sir Winston referred to his depressive phases as his "black dog", didn't he?

Posted by eLarson 2007-03-16 17:56|| http://larsonian.blogspot.com]">[http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2007-03-16 17:56|| Front Page Top

#13 Cottle is following a long tradition of hard-left medicine and psychiatry, best expressed in the old Soviet Union but certainly employed elsewhere. If your opponent stands firmly against you and rejects everything you say, there are only two potential reasons why: 1) he's evil 2) he's ill (that you could be wrong is not a potential reason, of course).

And since Ms. Cottle wants to be 'compassionate', she thinks Cheney is ill, not evil. What other explanation could there be? That's why she wrote what to you and me appears to be total tripe.

I doubt that compassion has anything to do with it. It is difficult to define anything as evil if there is no absolute standard of right and wrong, and the entire liberal project seems to have degenerated to eliminating all standards.

Posted by SR-71 2007-03-16 22:47|| 2007-03-16 22:47|| Front Page Top

#14 It was before your time, bigjim, but look at the hysteria that ran rampant in 1964. All the crap that is done to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, was done to Goldwater.

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2007-03-16 22:57|| http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2007-03-16 22:57|| Front Page Top

#15 thx for the info - I was born in '59. Goldwater is an unknown to me. Too new for history, too old for "poltical science 101" when I was in college

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2007-03-16 23:03|| 2007-03-16 23:03|| Front Page Top

17:02 gngbnncnbj
23:56 JosephMendiola
23:46 JosephMendiola
23:37 Zenster
23:36 Sneaze
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23:22 USN, ret.
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23:03 Frank G
22:57 Jackal
22:54 Zenster
22:49 Frank G
22:47 SR-71
22:43 Whert Bucket7890
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22:27 Whert Bucket7890
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