QandO: Andrew Greeley: Idiot First Class

June 11, 2004

Andrew Greeley: Idiot First Class
Posted by McQ

Just rest your eyes on this. In a piece in todays Chicago Sun-Times, Andrew Greeley asks "Is US like Germany of the '30s?"

Today many Americans celebrate a ''strong'' leader who, like Woodrow Wilson, never wavers, never apologizes, never admits a mistake, never changes his mind, a leader with a firm ''Christian'' faith in his own righteousness. These Americans are delighted that he ignores the rest of the world and punishes the World Trade Center terrorism in Iraq. Mr. Bush is our kind of guy.
He is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism. They have in common a demagogic appeal to the worst side of a country's heritage in a crisis. Bush is doubtless sincere in his vision of what is best for America. So too was Hitler. The crew around the president -- Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, the ''neo-cons'' like Paul Wolfowitz -- are not as crazy perhaps as Himmler and Goering and Goebbels. Yet like them, they are practitioners of the Big Lie -- weapons of mass destruction, Iraq democracy, only a few ''bad apples.''

Hitler's war was quantitatively different from the Iraq war, but qualitatively both were foolish, self-destructive and criminally unjust. This is a time of great peril in American history because a phony patriotism and an America-worshipping religion threaten the authentic American genius of tolerance and respect for other people.

The term "despicable" doesn't quite make it, does it? Nor does "irresponsible", stupid", "moronic" or "disgusting". They just don't quite fill the bill.

To pretend there is any "parallelism" between the Nazi regime of Hitler and the US under Bush is just flat ... well you fill in the word. It denies context and reality. It ignores the differences in who started the wars in question and how the wars have been conducted. It requires idiotic twists of fact, gigantic leaps of logic and a political agenda from hell.

Greeley has them all. The fact that a newspaper would print such garbage as that found in Greeley's column is not only astounding, but tells us a lot about the ideological extremism of his editors.

Mr. Greeley, there aren't sufficient words in my vocabulary to describe my disgust for you and your assinine commentary.

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Comments

AFter reading drivel like that I can almost wish we WERE like the Nazis, because this idiot would be the first marched off to the camps

Posted by: shark at June 11, 2004 09:49 AM

To pretend there is any "parallelism" between the Nazi regime of Hitler and the US under Bush is just flat ... well you fill in the word. It denies context and reality. It ignores the differences in who started the wars in question and how the wars have been conducted. It requires idiotic twists of fact, gigantic leaps of logic and a political agenda from hell.

More importantly, it cheapens the real evil of the Nazis and Hitler by inappropriately overusing the metaphor. The violence and suffering inflicted by Germany under the Nazis was singularly evil. Greeley's use of that memory to trash his political foes amounts to stealing from the grave of those martyrs for political gain. The more this is done the less impact the words Nazi, Fascist, Hitler, etc. will have in conveying true evil.

Posted by: D at June 11, 2004 10:08 AM

Call me a liberal if you wish: your sniveling wounded narcissism is reactionary in the worst sense.

My take: it is long past time to blow the whistle on some-40 years of RWing factual error, snuff opinionating, and philosophical whackyweed. This styistic BS is poison in the public square. Put a fork in - it is done.

I think the Nazi analogy sucks sulphur too just like all tired fundie-reactionaries -right/left/center.

Smell any roses, think any new thoughs, get down on your knees...lately?

Consider this: the soon-to-arrive reformation isn't going to be lead by
-Goldwater
-Reagen
-Gingrich or
-W
-or dried-up snivelers and opinionators

Posted by: SHH at June 11, 2004 08:39 PM

the idiocy of some people is really stupifying. is this guy serious? obviously he is. i'm interested in seeing what kind of meltdown the Democratic National Convention goes into - possibly the rantfest that Paul Wellstone's funeral morphed into?

in the meantime, i'm polishing up my hobnailed boots for our armored plunge into France....

Ach Du Liebe! we should have them beat only in about six weeks or so...

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