Election Campaign – Moon of Alabama

September 13, 2004

Election Campaign

Thucydides comments about the election campaign:

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any.
…
The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
…
The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation.
…
The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.
…
Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape.

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Posted by b on September 13, 2004 at 15:01 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The aptness of Thucydides words for our
present epoch is striking, just as we still don’t have a better framing of the clash between “civic duty” and “higher morality” than in Antigone . It’s difficult not to fear that Bush’s hubris has unleashed the Erinys, and that America has yet to pay the full price of its overweening pride. Non-Yankee deaths don’t count in the U.S. electoral economy.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 13 2004 15:59 utc | 1

Dear “Quote about the war of politics,”
I’d like you to introduce you to a friend of mine:
“Quote about the politics of war”
———-snip———-
“Am I afraid of being bombed? Of course. Everybody is. But within reason. I know I certainly wouldn’t leave Los Angeles if the Japanese were to attack it tomorrow. No, it isn’t that. … If I fear anything, I fear the atmosphere of the war, the power which it gives to all the things I hate — the newspapers, the politicians, the puritans, the scoutmasters, the middle-aged merciless spinsters. I fear the way I might behave, if I were exposed to this atmosphere. I shrink from the duty of opposition. I am afraid I should be reduced to a chattering enraged monkey, screaming back hate at their hate.”
–Isherwood wrote this in his diary on Jan. 20, 1940, scant months after arriving in America with his lifelong friend and sometime collaborator W.H. Auden.
———-end snip———-

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 13 2004 16:15 utc | 2

It’s quite scary that he’s so valid even now, and it’s quite sad since it means that people didn’t learn, and that people now can’t see what’s going on, even though it’s been laid bare 2400 years ago.
If W goes after Iran, there’ll be entire chapters from the Sicily’s expedition that could be copied, with just the names changed.
And of course there’s the Melian dialogue that is as prescient as ever. In fact, rereading it, I find it freaky that it’s even more accurate than what my memory led me to think. Just keep in mind he doesn’t put in his own ideas and doesn’t quote what was actually said, he writes what the real goals, thoughts, opinions and goals of both sides were.
So, here are some choice quotes:
Bush: Since the negotiations are not to go on before the people, in order that we may not be able to speak straight on without interruption, and deceive the ears of the multitude by seductive arguments which would pass without refutation…
Iraq: Your military preparations are too far advanced to agree with what you say, as we see you are come to be judges in your own cause, and that all we can reasonably expect from this negotiation is war, if we prove to have right on our side and refuse to submit, and in the contrary case, slavery.
Bush: We shall not trouble you with specious pretences and make a long speech which would not be believed, since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Iraq: And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.
Bush: The end of our empire, if end it should, does not frighten us: a rival empire is not so terrible to the vanquished as subjects who by themselves attack and overpower their rulers.
Iraq But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust.
Bush: When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 13 2004 16:24 utc | 3

Josh Marshall has just posted a sober, impassioned screed on the disaster of Iraq and the failure of the Kerry campaign to hold the Bush Administration accountable– proposing, in the process, that this may partly account for the Kerry campaign’s lack of traction thus far. But Marshall says nothing about the neo-cons, or AIPAC, or their death-grip on the discourse of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate. Go and read this thing, dear friends, and marvel for yourselves at Marshall’s unyielding ellipsis.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 13 2004 17:50 utc | 4

Link for alabama´s tip

Posted by: b | Sep 13 2004 18:22 utc | 5

@alabama
Marshalls reasoning and consequence the key to winning an election is often simply a matter of bringing to the surface of the public consciousness what voters already really know. They know Iraq is a disaster. They know it’s President Bush’s fault. is right in my view. Bringing up the neo-cons, AIPAC etc. is much to complicate for a campaign.
But then – why doesn´t Kerry have a alternative Iraq politic? My conclusion is that he has the same goals as Bush has on this issue and there is no other way to reach the goal.
Stay in Iraq whatever it takes and squeeze the oil producers and oil consumers of this world to further the US project of worldwide supremacy. The economical, military and moral supremacy of the US are gone. The only way to keep the “good life” up now is pure force.

Posted by: b | Sep 13 2004 18:42 utc | 6

Clueless Joe…
I like it.
Especially imagining those words coming from Bush’s fly trap of a mouth.
Who knows, maybe he really speaks like that in secret:
Matthew 6:5-6:
“And when thou speaketh well, thou shalt not be as the liberal effete are: for they love to speak glibly standing on tv soapboxes and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men….when thou speaketh well, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, speaketh well to thy ministers and enemies which is in secret….”
In other words, the stammering and illogical switchbacks are just a ploy to mindmeld with a stuttering and spluttering public.
Perhaps he really is an evil genius.
Certainly what’s happened to our world the last 3 years does not belie it.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 13 2004 18:58 utc | 7

Mark Twain said something I love:
“History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.”

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Sep 13 2004 20:12 utc | 8

b, Marshall isn’t writing a speech for Kerry or a policy paper here, he’s claiming to offer a serious analysis of the stakes involved in the election. So why wouldn’t he bother to mention the neo-cons, and the urgent need to get them out of office? At the very least his omission undermines his claim to a serious analysis, and might even lead us to think that he wishes not to offend them. And if so, why not? Can you, for that matter, point me to a single place where he speaks out directly against the neo-cons? I’ve tried to do my homework, and I’m certainly teachable about these things.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 13 2004 20:31 utc | 9

@alabama, Marshall doesn´t speak out against anybody. He didn´t speak out against the war either. I guess he is trying to keep his view as a historian – some good, though not always complete, analysis and a total lack of engagement.

Posted by: b | Sep 13 2004 20:50 utc | 10

Marshall debated Richard Perle last year at the Hudson Institute and televised on CSPAN, probably b/c he’s not much of threat to them. Can’t find the CSPAN link, but I found this mention of it.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 13 2004 22:03 utc | 11

In all good humor, b, let me mention that Juan Cole is also an historian, and that if it weren’t for Juan Cole, I for one would know a lot less about Iraq than I do. Cole’s also forthright about the Likudites–as is Billmon in his verbal intervals–and he says his piece at a price, because historians opposing LIkud, within and without the academy, are subject to intimidation. And I’ll even hazard the following guess about Marshall: either he’s been intimidated by the Likudites, or he’s had no fundamental disagreements with them from the start. If the latter, it would have been helpful of him if he’d said so, because it’s downright unhealthy not to say so: it tells us that the climate in Washington doesn’t just encourage the kind of frivolity denounced by Somerby, it actively discourages any forthright conversations about the neo-cons. And no one’s untouched by this, least of all you and I.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 13 2004 22:16 utc | 12

@Koreyel:
From the SF Chronicle piece on Isherwood:
Isherwood brought to friendship a formidable conversational talent. There’s a great glimpse of him in his friend Gore Vidal’s memoir, “Palimpsest, ” in which Vidal modestly announces “I am American literature.” Isherwood dryly replies, “I feared as much.”
Now that’s about the funniest line I’ve read in a week. They could both have been comedians too.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Posted by: Monty Python | Sep 13 2004 23:32 utc | 13

I first had the pleasure of reading Thucydides as a college freshman in the 1965-66 academic year, in the equiv. of “Western Civ.” I was very impressed that it applied to “contemporary” times, i.e. the Vietnam War.
May the Creative Forces of the Universe have mercy on our souls, if any.

Posted by: mistah charley | Sep 14 2004 0:38 utc | 14

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings opines that, in addition to the motive power provided by “National Greatness Conservatism” (not the same thing as neoconservatism, which was influential but not decisive), we went to war in Iraq because with the collapse of the Soviet Union we could intervene more freely in the world. (One need only look back at the post-Soviet 90’s for verification of this.) In other words, we went to Iraq, at least in significant part, for “the same reason a dog licks its balls.”
I like this explanation, however incomplete. And I can easily imagine a frustrated battalion commander saying to his XO, “Okay, Jeff, remind me again. Why are we here?” And the XO, well-rehersed, answers, “Why does a dog licks its balls, sir?” Oh yeah. Easily.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 14 2004 5:40 utc | 15

Josh Marshall has indeed spoken up about the neocons. He has actually been a good guide and referrer to essays about those gentlemen in the US administration and its advisor groups. He knows the neocons by name and affiliation and ideology.
As noted he does bait and has debated Perle. I watched his linked video of their panel, last spring I think. Marshall was shackled by a cold, Perle devastated him with characteristic blatant powerful arguments. I’d like to see a rematch, Marshall has a PhD in history and can think. And Perle he must think is his opposite.
I disagree with Perle but he has the passion of his convictions and is very slick. Very slick. Too slick for me.
I’m troubled by Marshall’s naivete when the recent Bush document controversy surfaced. This is CBS’s Dan Rather revealing documents leaked to them, my favorite is the “CYA memo” — clearly authentic, from one Killian, Bush’s late commanding officer I think.
Marshall, on vacation, fell for an attack on the authenticity of the documents based on the possiblity they had been poorly forged using a computer, instead of simply being copies of manually typewritten authentic menos.
Okay, he blew that one. Criticised for it as well.
This is a confusing point for me, that the Washington Democrats do and say things that make absolutely no sense to me here on the periphery.
Why did Josh Marshall even speak up on something he had no idea about, out of the loop as he was. Maybe just didn’t want us to know he was on vacation. Since apologised for, recently a post about his girlfriend and his dog on the beach.
The field of confusion extends to this John Kerry candidate, great quote on Babelogue from Steve Perry, “Who is this Kerry Edwards?”
He doesn’t post often enough for but I guess busy editing a newspaper, Perry’s blog is at Steve Perry Babelogue.
Still and all I did hear some good advice over the last little while, “eyes on the prize”. Who knows what a Kerry presidency might do, I have to imagine that it cannot come close to the outright criminality I see under the current one. I of course hope he can actually pull it off and do a good job.
Being inarticulate myself I have sympathy for Kerry, no quote I’ve read denies his obvious intelligence and comfort in speaking well. Not sure what’s up with the sports, he reminds me of a friend from the same part of the country — it’s a little embarassing but Kerry can do things at 60 plus that I’ll never do, windsurfing for one. That takes strength and skill.
After rereading the thread, I am responding to Alabama. You ask why Marshall doesn’t attack the neocons and ask for references where he has. He may be subtle but I read clearly his opposition to the “hawks.” There is a seminal article in Washington Monthly, Practice to Deceive from I guess last year some time. Seminal for me, anyway. My introduction to the Feiths and Perles of this world.
“The audacious nature of the neocons’ plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, “That plan’s just crazy enough to work.”
He almost admires them. Likewise John Perry Barlow’s defence of fellow Southwesterner Dick Cheney, as Barlow credits Cheney with the crazy Mexico tactic — driving erractically to intimidate crazy Mexican truck drivers. Barlow says this is the only rational explanation for Cheney’s support of MAD or the missile shield or some such, the possible nutcase at the wheel of the US big switch may have caused the USSR to spend itself dead.
Barlow is known as a lyricist for the band The Grateful Dead and also active in the EFF, Electronic Freedom Foundation I think. That’s a good one, no sarcasm. I really disagree with the guy but he says Cheney is the smartest guy he’s ever met except maybe Bill Gates.
He might mean powerful, manipulative or maybe just smart, who knows. I’m in no hurry to meet any of them. I don’t like people like that.
So as for the election, I strongly urge you to vote for Kerry. It is the only choice to change the track of the US.
If you don’t do that, vote for the craziest mo you can find, myself I voted Green recently ’cause I liked their platform locally and I heard they had a shot.
I’m not such a looky-lou that I want to see another Bush term. He’s kind of a loser politician so I say get rid of him and let’s see what the other guy can do.

Posted by: jonku | Sep 14 2004 9:14 utc | 16

I remember reading “Practice to Deceive,” Jonku, and re-reading it now at your suggestion, I can see what bothers me about Marshall. He has no quarrel with the neo-con vision of things, provided it works. He’s skillful at passing over its ethical problems–the sign, I believe, of his fundamental agreement with its aims. The same point holds for Brad DeLong, by the way: both of those guys are giving the neo-cons a free pass, ignoring the wicked violence of their designs while scolding them for the incompetence of their execution. This is just downright unhealthy–affecting the health of you and me.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 14 2004 14:02 utc | 17

@alabama
I would agree with your point, but it is interesting that the left also is admonished for, not its implicit goal (spreading democracy), but its impotence or incompetence at achieving that goal. This little juncture lies at the eye of all the hurricane rhetoric concerning Iraq and the middle east, and has contributed greatly to the intractablity of the problem by allowing failure to compound and then using that failure to escalate the the effort. It seems the neo-cons have created a sort of left/right fusion that bonds together some “noble” cause like spreading democracy&freedom, with some “effective” means, like total military domination. As such, any meaningful criticism from the left or right is muted almost automatically — as so evidenced by John Kerry or John McCain. Niether will challenge the central presuppositions of the neo-con argument, so on the train will go, fueled by its own momentem, until the track runs out.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 14 2004 19:06 utc | 18

Quite so, anna missed, and a real challenge to our sense of humor. I’m a Democrat, and democratic in my ideals, and so the arrogance of our misdeeds in Viet Nam came as mighty shock to all that carefully cultivated moral narcissism (cultivated, especially, through the experience of the civil rights movement). But we kept on trucking after Viet Nam, with the self-preserving (and self-serving) notion that we’d learned from our mistakes. And now, when younger people make those very same mistakes all over again–well, I find it very trying, and just hope that the “track” runs out sooner rather than later!

Posted by: alabama | Sep 14 2004 19:45 utc | 19

Is Kerry alive?
I don’t mean politically…but rather physcially?
I haven’t seen him or heard from him in days.
He’d better reload and revitalize himself in a hurry–chuck the qualudes and swallow some stiff uppers… because there is one thing democrats are sure good at: shooting each other in the foot.
I can feel his campaign teetering on the edge of implosion. Fingers are already starting to point…and the republicans are cachinating over the corpses like hyeanas.
What can be done to save the day?
Whatever it is… it has got to be drastic.
How drastic?
Well how about this… Kerry should come out and say that this is the Dumbest. Election. Ever.
And that he is SICK of it.
And that he isn’t going to play anymore.
That he wants the election to be about ISSUES. Where he and Bush stand on Iraq, the National Debt, healthcare, exporting jobs, stem cells, etc.
He needs to come out in a press conference and kick the ass of the press, kick the ass of the republicans, and even kick the ass of the democratics for devolving this campaign into an ugly food fight.
He should say he is embarassed about what America has displayed about itself this election season, and that he wants to be a source of change.
He needs to MAKE NEWS my sticking his foot into the very face of the NEWS.
He needs to get angry and passionate about that.
Otherwise…bury him with his sneakers on…he is dead.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 15 2004 4:36 utc | 20

@Koreyel
Well I could’nt agree more, like the bartender once said “fight fire with fire”. A firm measure of decisive, in your face, clearly thought out, and dispatched like a freight train indignation would work wonders at shattering the flip/flop liberal elite woose the rePugs have so carefully painted over him. Clearly– he needs to shock the American people to their senses, that, 4 more years of this — is four more years of this in an unknown quanity, plain and simple.
And if fear is to overshadow all issues and all sense amongst the sheeple, then give em’ the old LBJ mushroom cloud vision, economic collapse, full scale war in the mid- east, Iran, North Korea, and the looming spector of facism right here on mainstreet.
People need to be scared shitless — and then givin a clear alternative — cause it could all happen.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 15 2004 6:29 utc | 21

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