Let’s read Charles P. Pierce–writing on politics since 1976,
author of
Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the
Free—telling us what’s what in his article in the
May issue of Esquire, shall we? (Issues that gripe his gut
in that book? Creationism and the Terri Schiavo matter, both far
more signs of contempt for “those sorts of people” than well-honed
intelligence.)

The article is uninterestingly titled “Into
the Wilderness,” and its point is that the Republican Party has
become so insane and dangerous it is the duty of the American
people to do everything they can to defeat them politically on
every level. This is a thesis I have some sympathy with, minus
considering the likely alternatives.

But how does this veteran tough-minded political thinker make
his case, that the GOP is so dangerous that 100 percent Democratic
Party control of America is a moral and political necessity?
 

He starts off with some sort-of high-middlebrow mockery of those
shit-for-brains Republicans, in the person of Rick Santorum,
speaking, one is lead to believe, for the Party whose presidential
nomination he failed to win and for which he holds no office:

At one point, while debating Christ’s death and resurrection
with one of the prominent heretics of the day, Tertullian rather
famously stated, “Certum est quia impossibile
est.”

“It is certain because it is impossible.”

Not long before, I’d heard Rick Santorum tell a gathering of
supporters in New Hampshire of his dread of the possibility of
Iran’s gaining a nuclear-weapons capability. He touched upon the
destabilization of the region that he believed this would cause. He
spoke briefly of how it might ignite a general arms race in the
area of the world that least needs a general arms race. He
mentioned his stalwart support of the state of Israel. Then he
claimed that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a direct threat to the
United States.

There seemed to be a hole in this part of his argument. Any
attempt by Iran to use a nuclear weapon against the United States
would result in Iran’s future as a glass parking lot. Santorum
thereupon made a case that the Iranian government — the entire
Iranian government — was open to the idea of national suicide
because it would bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a
messianic figure of Shiite Islam whose arrival will presage the Day
of Judgment. I looked around the room, and heads were bobbing up
and down in agreement.

They were certain, because it was impossible.

I don’t want to adopt mock outrage, or pretend that Pierce is
somehow so dumb or forgetful (dare I suggest, an idiot?)
that he doesn’t know what I’m about to write, or that his
editor at Esquire didn’t know it, and which pretty
much every American who even knows there is a country called Iran
knows: that President Obama (Democrat) and his
administration believe the exact same thing, or at
least he claims to and acts like he does. (What beliefs truly
reside in these people’s heads is something I’ll never know and
probably don’t want to.) Really, Mr. Pierce. I believe it because
it’s true!

President Obama, in March:

During his address to pro-Israel lobby AIPAC on
Sunday, President Obama told the
audience that in regards to Iran, he did “not have a policy of
containment.” He had “a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a
nuclear weapon.”

“As I have made clear time and again during the course of my
presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary
to defend the United States and its interests,” Obama
exclaimed.

Leon Panetta, Obama’s secretary of defense, in January:

“We see the threats coming from Iran and a nuclear-capable Iran
represents a threat to us and to the world,” Panetta told reporters
at a Pentagon news conference…

Now, Pierce nowhere says that the Democrats do not
believe this absurdity–which I agree is absurd. But the entire
framing of his piece is that the Democrats remain the sensible,
noble opposition to whom we must turn, because, as he writes, the
GOP “has become completely demented.” So far his only proof of this
dementedness is that they agree with the Democratic President Obama
on Iran. What else has he got though? Maybe he’s saving the best
for later.

OK, he’s got global warming, birth control, voter ID, all issues
in which there is a genuine difference, generally, between most
Republicans and most Democrats, but not ones that actually are
energizing much
real political action on the part of either party, whether or
not you agree there should be such action.

To show that he’s an establishmentarian at heart, Pierce has to
hat-tip to Mitt Romney for being, well, normal and respectable
(although he believes the exact same thing that Pierce led with at
length to prove the insanity of Republicans):

That’s how Mitt Romney came to tie himself in a bowline
trying to run for president, even though he was the only real
candidate in a field of crackpot poseurs, and even though he was
running the only real campaign as opposed to tent revivals,
exercises in brand maintenance, and extended book tours. Too late
did Romney realize that the path to the nomination led through an
alternate reality.

Who is the one GOP candidate–hell, the one national political
figure of any sort–who shares Pierce’s good sense on Iran and its
(lack of) threat? Ron Paul (I
wrote a book about him), who I guess doesn’t even deserve to
have his name mentioned. Is he a “crackpot poseur” or doing “brand
maintenance”? The reader has to guess, because Pierce won’t say his
name.

He has some negative words for the Democrats too, though not the
true ones that they believe in what his portentous long lead marked
as a unique insanity of the GOP:

As conservatism was developing its powerful infrastructure, the
Democratic party was still sucking its thumb over what happened to
George McGovern in 1972. While conservative millionaires were
pouring money into the construction of the network of institutions
on the right, the Democrats were throwing themselves, through the
creation of the Democratic Leadership Council, in the general
direction of the same money. Nothing arose on the left, or around
the Democratic party, that remotely resembled the formidable
arsenal of opinion that developed on the right, and of which the
Republicans took full advantage, not realizing at the time that all
of that success was hollowing out their party’s essential intellect
until all that is left today is raw, overwhelming id.

The Democrats were powerless against this, and they did not seek
to be anything else. They became gifted at defense, surrendering
bits of what was once fundamental to their party’s identity as a
bulwark against losing it all.

Not sure what part of the Democratic soul he thinks is lost–he
gives no specifics. It isn’t that they aren’t still spending as
much as they can and more, creating or being complicit in the
creation of new entitlements, taking over the health care market,
or generally in no way shrinking the modern liberal megastate.

Perhaps it’s a failure to keep taxes higher? That might be a
legitimate point to make–it is, I think, the one somewhat
unambiguous area where partisans could point to a Republican
“victory” of sorts lately–but Pierce remains maddeningly unable to
discuss actual politics or policy, as opposed to the rhetoric or
attitude of people like Sarah Palin who scare him:

This is what keeps the Democrats from being able to make the
Republicans pay full price for their party’s departure from reality
on so many issues. In 2006, the Republicans were handed a defeat in
the midterms every bit as resounding as the one suffered by the
Democrats four years later. The difference is that there were so
many institutions enabling and validating the Republicans’ outré
ideas that they didn’t see any need to moderate them as a result of
the 2006 debacle. They simply rode out the 2008 presidential
election and retooled those ideas for the age of Obama. Suddenly,
we started hearing about “czars,” and more talk about socialism
than you would have heard at Eugene V. Debs’s bachelor party. What
were once moderate Republican ideas were now the thin edge of the
collectivist wedge. The transformation was complete. And it was
remarkable.

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican
party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again
becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the
country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with
the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too
far gone.

I wish some editor had asked Pierce: what exactly are you
talking about? What have these Republicans actually done, that the
Democrats would have done differently? What should Democrats be
doing to prove how sensible they are, or to “make the Republicans
pay full price” which alas in a democracy means convincing enough
voters they are right and the GOP are wrong? What exactly are the
Democrats right about? What should they be right about? Not a hint
of an adumbration of an example or argument in this longish
column.

As I said, it is so impossible even Tertullian wouldn’t believe
it that Pierce and his editors didn’t know that he professes to be
appalled at Republicans for believing exactly what the president
and his party believe. Thus, it is merely gross disrespect for
their readers’ intelligence in the name of idiot partisanship that
could lead Pierce to write this, and a reputable and often quite
good (except when writing
about politics) magazine like Esquire to let that
utterly nuts lead (for Pierce’s own rhetorical purposes of
explaining why Democrats are so much better than Republicans)
stand, and for letting the rest of this vague article whose only
base of intellectual support seems to be the unspoken, or
unspeakable, assumption that: we all know Democrats are better even
though we don’t know exactly how or why, or we assume the answer to
how or why is so obvious we don’t need to say anything
specific.

Is it because they are supposed to be better on civil
liberties, the drug
war, not turning government into a
tool of the plutocracy? Because they aren’t better on any of
that. If it’s because they don’t generally say things publicly
about being against birth control or wanting voter I.D. laws? If
so, I guess you got me.

But that seems like a thin reed on wich to lean the weight of
the future of this Republic–being gutted and ruined by profligate
and anti-liberty policies from both major parties. But Pierce is
the kind of guy who doesn’t seem to care that much about
policy–just knows that the type of people at a Santorum rally or
who worry about the fate of Terri Schiavo aren’t for him. I’m with
you there, Mr. Pierce, mostly. But think through your options for
opposition to one party’s nuttiness a little more clearly, please,
for yourself and your readers.