The Culture War takes no prisoners

When Ann Coulter is waging culture war, she takes no prisoners.

She slit Bill O'Reilly's throat on his own show while he was desperately trying to say nice things about Dr. George Tiller after Olbermann (among others) accused him of goading Scott Roeder into killing the man O'Reilly called "Tiller the Baby Killer." Problem was, his "guest" didn't cooperate.


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Unfortunately for Ann, her viciousness was overlooked by Olbermann/Maddow/Stewart/Colbert in favor of the Gov. Mark Sanford adultery saga -- a different kind of culture war.

9/11 has happened before and 9/11 will happen again

The Big Dick (Cheney) is right: September 11, 2001 will occur again. Not for the reasons he gives (weak-liberal failure to throw out the Constitution and anoint Bush-Cheney as co-Presidents for life) but because every damn time someone tries to generate a serious online discussion about what happened and how to prevent it, the 9/11 "Truthers" co-opt the discussion/comments with their conservative-generated, military-industrial-complex-financed "theories."


If we can't learn from the past -- indeed, can't even talk about the past without attracting Truther-mosquitos, are we doomed to repeat the mistakes and missed chances?

Postmodernism as an art of war

Despite the loud and ugly bashing of the Right, conservatives love to employ techniques they discovered by studying postmodernism. Consider this technique: Israeli soldiers walk through walls :

The maneuver conducted by units of the Israeli military during the attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, as "inverse geometry," which he explained as the re-organization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions. During the attack, soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long "over-ground-tunnels" carved out through a dense and contiguous urban fabric.

. . .

Furthermore, soldiers did not often use the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city, as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors.

This type of three-dimensional thinking doesn't come easy. It's a hybrid of radical (liberal AND conservative) philosophy.

Radical Philosophy is not committed to any particular philosophy, ideology or political programme.

Much like the relationship between atomic theory and the atomic bomb, a genius devises the theory and a technician devises its uses.

So why does the right employ so many people to demonize, trivialize, and stifle postmodernists? Maybe they don't want just everyone learning their tricks? After all, the "walking through walls" technique could be used by Palestine to attack Israel. Or Al Qaeda in Iraq to invade the Green Zone. Or the Taliban to get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear weapon. Or....

Aren't all wars noble?

Don't leaders start wars for noble, patriotic reasons?


Apparently, not always.

Hitler fought in the First World War and witnessed the death and maiming of hundreds of his comrades. At the war's end, he was the victim of a poison gas attack. Two million German men died in the First World War and over 4 million were wounded. Hitler realized that young Germans had been sent to die by the nation and its leaders—“like sheep to the slaughter.

One might imagine that Hitler would have turned against war after experiencing such awful things, but he did not. Upon becoming Germany's Führer, Hitler immediately began planning for the next World War, declaring that he was prepared to answer for the blood-sacrifice of another generation of young Germans and would not hesitate because of the "10 million young men that he would be sending to their death."

But Hitler wasn't the only one. Guess which other leaders also sold out their countrymen?

The war to wage fake wars

One thing the conservative era was known for was its fake wars - the war against an imaginary enemy. Why? Such wars are easy to "win": since the enemy doesn't really exist, and since we seem to be in love with the idea of believing in - and believing - imaginary beings (from Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy in childhood to Rambo and Jack Bauer), why fight a real war against a real enemy who might actually shoot back!

Starting with the uncovering of the nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (which some people still refuse to stop believing!), these heroic victories against imaginary "enemies" are being unmasked as frauds. The latest:

The Drug War got a major boost with the infamous "crack baby epidemic" lie, which would, the Reagan Administration asserted, fill the ghettos with "learning disabled, aggressive, and addiction-prone slum dwellers." Is it any surprise that it never happened? Or was the non-appearance of hordes of crack-addict-deranged adults proof that Nancy's drug war worked?

But fake war syndrome goes both ways. It causes people to believe in what doesn't exist and disbelieve what does exist.

For example, the Reaganomicons also worked hard to wage a 3-decade war to debunk global warming despite all the evidence, and won! Now there's no chance we can stop the meltdown. All we can do is try to live with its effects.

But some people are so addicted to believing what doesn't exist they feel the need to surround themselves with "true fake-believers" who excel in waging fake wars:

Teenagers tackle the apocalypse

There are a bunch of new "young adult" books which feature teenagers living through a variety of natural and man-made apocalypses.

Today's headlines provide plenty of fodder. The post- 9/11 tension between security and liberty inspires classic Orwellian themes in Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother," about a teen who is wrongfully detained and tortured by the Department of Homeland Security after the worst terrorist attack in San Francisco history. To protect the Constitution and wreak revenge, the teen -- his handle is "wIn5ton," pronounced "Winston" -- uses his hacking skills to subvert DHS.

"How much we want to be taken care of versus how much we want to be free -- that's an issue that hits home with teens," Bass said, "because they're always trying to be free."

Other novels explore classic dystopian themes against the backdrop of a thoroughly modern threat -- global warming.

Adults read apocalyptic stories too, but they call it a newspaper.

Worlds shudder and collapse all the time. There's no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the final Romanoff, Napoleon, or that Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff. But when it seems to be happening to your world, well, that's a different kettle of fish. When you get the word, the call, the notice that you're a goner, or when your little world shudders, that's something else again.

Even if the call's not for you, but for a friend, an acquaintance, someone close enough so you can feel the ripples, that can do the trick.

The war to secure "victory" in Iraq

In Washington, a 513-page draft report is circulating which lists all the errors and misjudgements of the Iraq war. How to ensure reporters don't get their hands on a copy? Take them all on a holiday trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, where Bush will tell them what is and isn't true!

Are American reporters still willing to believe Bush? You betcha! Not so a certain Iraqi journalists

Bush ordered the nation into war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq while citing intelligence claiming the Mideast nation harbored weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were never found, the intelligence was discredited, Bush's credibility with U.S. voters plummeted and Saddam was captured and executed.

"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It was at that point the journalist stood up and threw a shoe from about 20 feet away.

Why can't these guys believe Bush's lies as fervently as the PROFESSIONAL American journalists? What's wrong with them?