The Trouble With Rabinowitzin’

(A) Rabinowitzers think like Neocomrade Rupert Lord Murdoch’s Wall Street Jingo:

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

(B) Rabinowitzers extend the customary self-exceptionalisin’ and self-indispensin’-with of Hooverville and Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City generally to the point of claimin’ a special relationship with Ms. Reality:

That this [1] is so, and that it is not good news for him, is truth of a kind not quite fathomable to this [P]resident and his men.

(C) Rabinowitzers read minds, especially the minds of those on one of their factionette’s many enemies lists:

... the superior ethical and moral leadership the world can expect from this administration as compared with that of presidencies past. This exercise in comparisons is one of which Mr. Obama may well never tire.

(D) Rabinowitzers double- and even weekly-standardise:

Then came the memos. With his decision to release them, Mr. Obama guaranteed an instant explosion of outrage of a kind that could never have happened otherwise, notwithstanding his claim that most of the contents were already public. The results of the president's decision were predictable. Each day now brings, in the usual media quarters, fevered exhortations calling for the trials and punishment of Bush administration officials. [2]

(E) Though Rabinowitzers would presumably assent, Mr. Bones, to our own notion that one cannot sanely hope to convince anyone above the age of puberty that she is seriously mistaken about distinctions of right and wrong, they do their characteristic self-exceptionalisin’ shtyk at this point also, and blithely assume that they can reliably pull it off:

By revealing the memos, [Her Imperial Highness snarked,] with their detailed information on those interrogation techniques (now banned), we had elevated our moral status in the eyes of the world. (...) There is always danger [Her Imperial Highness observed, now snarklessly] in repeating propositions like this often, among them the likelihood that their irrationality will begin to make itself clear to anyone hearing it over time. [2]

(F) Though a cut or two above the rank-and-file Party base and vile in other respects, Rabinowitzers have no reservations about MEGOP [4] by-laws #665 and #666, "History is bunk!" and "That was then, this is now!":

... arrogance, dismissiveness, Guantánamo, deficiencies in its attitudes toward the Muslim world, and the presidency of Harry Truman and his decision to drop the atomic bomb, which ended World War II. No sitting American president had ever delivered indictments of this kind while abroad, or for that matter at home, or been so ostentatiously modest about the character and accomplishment of the nation he led. [5]

(G) Rabinowitzers never tire of lamentin’ that they had failed to take over tertiary education long before failin’ to take over the holy Homeland™ lock, stock and barrel under George XLIII:

Five decades of teaching in colleges and universities across the land, portraying the U.S. as a power mainly responsible for injustice and evil, whose military might was ever a danger to the world -- a nation built on the fruits of greed, rapacity and racism -- have had their effect. The products of this education find nothing strange in a president quick to focus on the theme of American moral failure. He may not share many of their views, but there is, nonetheless, much that they find familiar about him.

And now, enough of the Baní Rabinowitz!

Happy days.




___
[1] The neocomradely ‘this’ refers to

The images of that trip, in which Mr. Obama dazzled ecstatic Europeans with citations of the offenses against international goodwill and humanity committed by the nation he leads, are now firmly imprinted on the minds of Americans. That this is so ... &c. &c.

That is to say, Her Imperial Highness understands "the minds of Americans" better than some no-’count trailer trash from Cook County who merely managed to climb to the top of the greasy pole.


[2] A copy of that neoïdeological gem should be inserted into pigeon hole (B) also, insofar as Her Imperial Highness has evolved well past any ability to gauge accurately what such outsiders as "the usual media quarters" are saying and doing. Only a very few of us fiends have lapsed into "fevered exhortations," even if one counts Mr. Glenn Greenwald as a host in himself.

At the same time H. I. H. neostandardises by omittin’ all mention of what noises--and what thoroughly predictable noises!--UMQ, "unusual media quarters," at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh have been emittin’ on the same topic. The ftiny actionette of Rabinowitzers is not to be tarred by any loose association with the rank-and-file GOP base and vile, but what could be better balanced and fairer than to take Mr. Greenwald as the Voice of the Left?


[3] Since thee and I moralize with M. Pascal, sir, I lump the two Imperial oracles together. Members of other schools would distinguish the Rabinowitzers’ self-privilegin’ in respect of moral insight with their fathomless self-esteemin’ on supposed possession of the (more all-’round) Herrnstein-Murray IQ product in a degree that lesser breeds without can never hope to rival.

Exactly what views are held within the inaccessible fastnesses of Castle Podhóretz and the Rupertschloss about whether moral propositions are purely a matter of rationality or involve some additional flair or "moral sense," I dunno. Despite all the tertiary-educational airs and graces of the Rabinowitzer factionette, it is quite possible that these fashionable and upmarket neocomrades have never thought about such a question long enough to arrive at a definite consensus or tentative Big Party line.

Inside my ellipsis, Her Imperial Highness condescended to ridicule Mr. Emmanuel’s notions of the realpolitisch implications of autoleakage of the George XLIII torture memoranda, "This would undermine al Qaeda ... because those interrogations of ours helped to enlist terrorists to their cause."

The Rabinowitzer stance appears to be that Mr. Emmanuel is self-evidently mistaken, or so it is natural to infer from the absence of any attempt to argue against it. The factionette’s eternal and ubiquitous self-preferencin’ is patent rather than inferential: a Rabinowitzer completely appreciates the self-evidentiality of the self-evident whilst we humble are still puzzling over it, unable to grok it without lots of time and repetition.

If taken to result from philosophy rather than from factious hormone-basin’, this stance would commit the Rabinowitzer crew to a non-rationalistic theory of moral judgment. But of course there is no positive reason so to take it.


[4] MEGOP == "Militant extremist Republican(s)."

Thee will notice, Mr. Bones, how nicely the first half of my new pet name for the sweet puppies of Endarkenment works in the omphaloscopy of Master Narcissus Dexter. Also the neo-Levantine obsessions of the Rabinowitzer-Rupertoid factionette.

’Tis a twofer, begorrah!


[5] Her Imperial Highness is relyin’ rather heavily on Her tone of voice and Her pseudogentility at this point to distinguish Herself from the rabble of Dr. Limbaugh. "Ostentatiously modest" is about as ostentatious a sarcasm as one is likely to encounter in six months of searching. And similarly with the sentence that follows, "He was mediator, an agent of change, a judge, apportioning blame -- and he was above the battle."

Let's see, it ought to be easy enough for the pet google to find how the Witch Doctor of Democracy™ worded the same sentiment . . . :

RUSH: So not only is [President Obama] unlike anybody we've ever had, he's so far ahead of us that we are blinded by the light, as we look at his trail. He's so far ahead of us, folks, that all we see is the dust in which he is leaving us. He's so far ahead of his time. And people ask me, "How the hell could he have gotten elected?" I give you Elijah Cummings who represents the mind-set, the ignorance of the average Obama voter. This kind of idolatry of political people has happened before, but it's not healthy, pure demagoguery. CUMMINGS: ... I think leadership, you know, I've always believed that leadership, true leadership is always before its time, and I think that you have to -- and I think Barack believes it -- that you've gotta act on what you believe is right, and then sometimes you gotta wait for the critics to catch up.

(( The two speeches occurred in the opposite order during the radio neocomrade's performance of yesterday. Comrade Cummings is a non-paleface U.S. Representative from Maryland. ))

Notice that in subsequent specimen (G), the way Her Imperial Highness phrases Herself is indistinguishable from limbloviation, an identity that I tentatively attribute to Rabinowitzers, like Bin-Ládinites, havin’ both a "far enemy" (Comrade POTUS and the American Democracy and l*b*r*lism and psocialism) and a "near enemy" (evil perfessers who can't park a bicycle straight).

Most of the real bile and venom are reserved for the foe closer at hand, who has, after all, done the sweet puppies more real harm over the years.