Personal Politics of Rage

[Annie]

It's from the right and the left. I've noticed it growing starting with all the investigations into Clinton and growing worse since the 2000 election. Considering that the President's ratings have stagnated into the low 30's and Congress far into more dangerous low teens, anyone who seriously cares for the country should be paying attention:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/08/jon_soltz_and_the_politics_of.php

By Roger L. Simon

I had never heard of Captain Jon Soltz before I saw him respond so dramatically to Sgt. David Aguina in front of Andrew Marcus’ pitiless video camera. Soltz leapt to his feet in high dudgeon to threaten the earnest and somewhat naïve Aguina with all the might of military justice for the evidently cardinal crime of speaking (very deferentially, almost obsequiously) at a political event while in uniform.

and as has been noted, the right couldn't wait to pounce on this added misstep from O'Reilly's latest bashing blog.

Whatever the gravity of the crime, Soltz’s reaction was clearly out of control. He took poor, confused Aguina aside, scolding him like an errant child while glaring at the camera like a movie star whose privacy had been invaded. Anyone with the slightest media savvy (or human sophistication for that matter) would have realized a polite pat on the head to Aguina and the sergeant would have vanished into the anonymity from whence he came after a few bland words. (Instead, his visage wound up on Drudge, like Mr. Smith come to a virtual Washington.) Something had turned Soltz into an irrational bully.

It’s hard to believe it was the uniform. More likely that is what the shrink’s call the “presenting complaint”. The problem for Soltz was Aguina’s subject – the surge in Iraq and the possibility it might be succeeding. But why should someone as meek and anonymous as Aguina have the power to make a panelist/authority figure like Soltz lose control on this subject?

The answer, I think, is that politics in our society has become increasingly identified with the self. Stolz reacted like a man whose own person would be threatened if the surge were to succeed. He had to be right. The image of success in Iraq was a shock to his ego, a narcissistic wound. (That Soltz used the terminology “My military” is a give away of his narcissistic impulses, as one commenter on Pajamas noted.)

Now of course Soltz is not alone in this. We see it everywhere from the Internet to our cable news networks to the boardrooms of our most respected newspapers. And we see it on all sides of the ideological spectrum. People identify their very selves with their political views. To say this is not good is an understatement.

I see it almost as a personal 'nationalism' of one's opinion.

Besides making it almost impossible for people to change their minds, it makes it exceptionally difficult for them even to talk to each other, let alone reason together. Interestingly, that was the “naïve” Aguina’s point – that “good people” should be able to talk together about what was going on.

But they can’t. We live in a veritable politics of rage. We no longer have a society where what would appear to be good news for our country – success for the surge – would be applauded by a decent majority of our citizens. Something has gone very wrong. And there is plenty of responsibility to go around, a whole culture of people defining each other as “moonbats” and “wingnuts,” those two execrable neologisms of our times. And our politicians and media have only encouraged it.

Right now we are in the high season of the extremes of our political parties – these “ragers” – controlling our electoral process. Historically, after the nominating process, the candidates abjure these extremes and return to the Great American Center. But I wonder if it will happen this time. Too much water is under the bridge, virtual and otherwise. Too many statements have been made, recorded forever on hard drives, and the pathology has grown deeper. There may be no rescue.

 

[uscitizen]

Huh ?

 

[Cypress]

The dude had been warned by General Wesley Clark the day before that he shouldn't be wearing his dress uniform, to political events. Its army regulations.

The fact that he still showed up the next day in his dress uniform, suggests that he was trolling the convention and was using the uniform of the United State army as a prop.

Captain Solz evidently was pissed that this guy ignored General Clark from the previous day , ignored Army regulations, and was using his uniform as a prop.

 

[Annie]

Looks like this is becoming somewhat of a theme:

http://opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110010430

Mad House
Congress needs an intervention.

Monday, August 6, 2007 12:01 a.m.

The House of Representatives almost turned into the Fight Club Thursday night, when Democrats ruled that a GOP motion had failed even though, when the gavel fell, the electronic score board showed it winning 215-213 along with the word FINAL. The presiding officer, Rep. Mike McNulty (D., N.Y.), actually spoke over the clerk who was trying to announce the result.

In the ensuing confusion several members changed their votes and the GOP measure to deny illegal aliens benefits such as food stamps then trailed 212-216. Boiling-mad Republicans stormed off the floor. The next day, their fury increased when they learned electronic records of the vote had disappeared from the House's voting system.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made matters worse when she told reporters, "There was no mistake made last night." Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had to rescue her by acknowledging that, while he thought no wrongdoing had occurred, the minority party was "understandably angry." Under pressure, the House unanimously agreed to create a select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate Republican charges the vote had been "stolen."

Congress appears to be gripped by a partisanship that borders on tribal warfare. In a forthcoming book, Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein compares it to a "second Civil War" that has led to "the virtual collapse of meaningful collaboration" between the two parties. Public disenchantment with Washington is such that now both New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Democratic former senator Sam Nunn of Georgia are musing openly about an independent run for president. But Congress itself has to act if it doesn't want to degenerate into one of those fist-wielding European or Asian parliaments we occasionally see on TV.

The breakdown has been a long time coming. In the 1980s, after almost 40 years of control, House Democrats had become arrogant and casually exercised the near-absolute power that body gives the majority. In 1985, Democrats insisted on handing a disputed Indiana House seat to the Democratic incumbent by a four-vote margin despite clear evidence that ballots had been handled in a completely arbitrary way during a special recount by a House task force. In 1987, Speaker Jim Wright held open a budget vote for an extra 10 minutes in a frantic effort to convince someone to change his vote. The maneuver prompted then-Rep. Dick Cheney to call Mr. Wright "a heavy-handed son of a bitch."

Republicans didn't act any better during the reign of Majority Leader Tom DeLay. In 2003, a massive Medicare prescription drug entitlement was passed only after a vote was held open for three hours at 3 a.m. as Mr. DeLay strong-armed reluctant GOP members into voting for it. Votes were held open at least a dozen times during the last years of the Republicans' troubled control of the House.

...

In the first article I believe there was some mention of the rhetoric becoming so divisive as to cause cognitive dissonance about changing one's mind on issues. That should be reason enough for both sides to turn down the rhetoric, discussion/debate should be about persuading through ideas or hearing another side so that we are able to consider what's being said and the validity of such.