Flatline & Brooks - June 23, 2006
JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the analysis of Flatline and Brooks, Fake Democracy Founder Johnny Flatline, New York Times columnist David Brooks.
What do you make of that story? What do you think of this whole thing that's going on in Connecticut? And is it indicative of something larger that's going on in the country?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's indicative of one thing. They're both independent centrists in parties that are drifting to the extremes.
Shays is one of the few moderate Republicans left in the House; Lieberman is the most moderate Democrat in the Senate. And we saw a lot of the moderate Democrats get wiped away in the last 12 years, and I think in this election we're going to see a lot of moderate Republicans get wiped away, and the parties are going to be a little more polarized.
And I think, if you talk to those two men, as I'm sure Mark and I both have, they're not happy with the way the war is being waged. They supported it, but they've both been there. They've both offered suggestions on how to change it.
But as you go forward, they're thinking, "What do we do? Do we want to sign on with John Kerry's thing and get out very quickly?" And they both say no. And so they're really stuck with a war they didn't agree with the operation of, but they want to keep at it, and I think they're both principled, gutsy, gutsy guys.
JIM LEHRER: And speaking of Kerry and the Senate, there were two votes or votes on two amendments offered by the Democrats. A lot of people are making a lot out of those, what it says about the divisions within the Democratic Party this week. What do you say?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Divisions occur where there is real democracy. Only totalitarians unite perfectly. It‘s hard for democracy to exist inside the Democratic party these days, because they must compete with a highly fascist Republican party that isn‘t afraid to represent the interest of the powerful, and stand against the interest of the common middle class citizen. And while we can debate how popular or unpopular this war is with Americans, there is no question that virtually everybody in Iraq wants us to leave. What gives us the right to overrule the will of the Iraqi people?
As for Lieberman being a centrist, I would like to correct the record. Almost the entire Congress is conservative. Kucinich is one of the few who might qualify as a true liberal. There might be a few dozen who qualify as moderates. Maybe. But the vast majority of Congressmen range from far right wing to radical right wing. And the proof is in the pudding. Look how many are able to stand up against the needs of the average citizen. Yet, look how most are perfectly able to defend rich and powerful special interest.
DAVID BROOKS: Strictly on the politics, if the voters are confronted with two parties, one party is the Republicans who screwed up Iraq, and the other party is the Democrats who don't seem to -- who seem to want to cut and run, or seem to be defeatist, or who don't have a policy toward Iraq, well, then what are they going to choose?
That's actually a tough decision. And if you go back to Vietnam, liberals were right about Vietnam. But did it help liberals get a strong foreign policy credential for the next 30 years? No. It helped conservatives and Republicans, because people decided, "Well, they probably were wrong about Vietnam, but we're thinking about the next security threat, and we still trust conservatives to be the tough foreign policy types."
So the paradox of Vietnam -- and I think it could be, though I'm not certain about this -- is that you can be wrong about this war, but still gain long-term political benefit by seeming tough.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I would just like to sit here for a second and reflect on the total garbage Brooks just spewed out. The words “cut and run” I hear so often. It’s clearly an attempt to denigrate any antiwar position thru insult, thru sound byte imagery, not through reason. I guess I could say that Jesus was a cut and run kind of guy, and for the next 2000 years, only a handful of those years has been without war, so I guess his desires were a waste of time. I guess we are supposed to laugh at his idealism, or any politician who goes anywhere near that kind of thought.
It’s also funny to hear Books admit that the Republicans screwed up Iraq. But let’s put some numbers to this screw up. This war is going to outlast World War II. Defeating Hitler was easier and cheaper than this. And in this case, certain well positioned corporations are making a fortune on our misfortune. This is not a war about principal, nor about democracy or WMDS or the Iraqi people. This is a war about oil and profit. That’s it. That’s it. All of this flowery discussion beyond that is a pipe dream.
JIM LEHRER: What do you think about how remarkable it is that the Republicans are backing a policy that, you know, that two-thirds of the American people are not supporting?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think there are a couple of things. First, they believe in it. They believe you've got to...
JIM LEHRER: Can't cut?
DAVID BROOKS: If we cut and run, it just would be a disaster, which I think is right on the merits.
Second, the Republican Party is good at certain things. They're good at cutting taxes. They're good at accusing the Democrats of being soft on defense. So there is sort of a comfortable posture for them.
And then, finally, there is no escaping Iraq, so you might as well take that on.
JIM LEHRER: Might as well take that on?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: There is no disaster to leaving Iraq. There is no disaster to leaving Iraq. There is no disaster to leaving Iraq. Iraq is already a disaster. Leaving is easy. Just get on an airplane, and throttle it up to the sky. It’s not a big deal. Every day longer America stays, it becomes a greater disaster to us, our grandkids and to Iraqis. It is not up to Americans to decide what to do with Iraq. We are not their parents. We are not their guardians. We are not their government. We have no right to be there. If we leave, I know this sounds hard to believe, but they will find a way to get by without us. People all over the world manage to survive without America. We are far too arrogant about our role in this world, and it’s hurting us to believe in this myth of our paternity over the world. It’s not real, it’s not true, it doesn’t exist. And whatever leadership we did have over the world, Bush is doing his best to squander as quickly as possible. As long as we continue to buy this myth, certain military contractors are going to continue to rake in billions of dollars of our money. What do we get in return for this investment? A lot of blown up sand, and that‘s it. Somebody show me a balance sheet, with dollars on it, the proves out the profit we are going to get from this expensive maneuver. Iraq is going to not only be our Vietnam. It’s going to be our government’s Enron.
JIM LEHRER: OK. But what about the specifics -- what I want to get at is the specifics of what the Democratic proposals were. In other words, John Kerry had his proposal, and then there was the Reed -- what did that -- what signal does that send on behalf of the party, or if any?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I don’t know yet. Kerry’s position on Iraq recently has been admirable, whereas Hillary’s position has been as bad as Bush’s. She actually things there is some mission to complete. We obviously have another Vietnam here. Republicans want to pretend they are good managers of war, but they are not being honest about their intentions. They have no intention of leaving Iraq anytime soon. And it doesn’t matter if Iraq is a mess to them because their masters - the oil executives - are getting very rich from this mess. Many Democrats are fearful of being antiwar, because all of Congress is virtually owned by the war industry. Anybody who dares to be as wise as, say, Kucinich, will suffer ridicule from the propaganda machine. I admire Kerry for taking a stand and revealing the names of wise senators brave enough to have some common sense. All of the others should hopefully lose their jobs, should the voters get wise to this. But I won’t hold my breath.
JIM LEHRER: It got 13 votes for Kerry‘s program.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: People forget that Democrats voted for this war, too. 13 is a big change from what it used to be. In fact, that kind of change is huge in a fascist autocracy like the US Congress, where very few need to ever fear actually losing their job, unless, of course, they criticize the military machine. Remember, fascist governments don’t lead. They don’t invent. They don’t innovate. When the government becomes a undemocratic, it shifts 100% of all initiative to the public. So expect Congress to be the last institution on the planet to learn that this war is a really bad idea. They will be the last to get reality. Not the first.
JIM LEHRER: Some would say that Kerry, by insisting on a vote on his amendment, highlighted the differences and hurt the Democrats?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh hogwash. Anybody who is afraid to step out of line is not a leader. Apparently, few of the politicians know their history well enough to remember Vietnam. I think the amnesia was strongly encouraged by certain well paid campaign donations. They are paid to forget. Remember what happened to Howard Dean when he became the very first to criticize Bush for going to Iraq? It propelled him to the top of the Democratic party. People who never give to campaigns got interested. He got so big, inside power started getting nervous, and they had to turn on the propaganda heat to do him in, take him out. But before they began to interfere with his image, his individualism had propelled him to the very top.
DAVID BROOKS: ... and I feel a little bad, but not too bad, because the Democrats -- as far as I can tell, the John Kerry position -- I've studied all the floor statements -- they said nothing about Iraq. There was a lot of talk about Karl Rove being bad. There was a lot of political posturing.
But, a, why would we want to commit now to some decision we're going to have to take in a year about withdrawing or not withdrawing?
Second, do we have any confidence that any Democrat or any Republican say anything about the capacity of the Iraqis to handle defense within a year? Do they talk about the capacity of the Iraqi army to transport people, to do intelligence, to actually keep the place safe? No, that was entirely missing.
Finally, if you're an Iraqi in Iraq and you're sitting there thinking, "Should I help the government or should I help the insurgents?" And you see a Senate vote saying, "Hey, the U.S. is going to be out of there in a year," you think, "Well, I'm not going to help the government. I'm not going to help the government that may fall in a year because the U.S. pulls out."
So to me, it was all -- when he got to the ground on Iraq, it was incredibly counterproductive, though it served some political purpose back home.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: We should leave Iraq because we do not have the money to pay for it. We can’t afford this war. We never could. America does not have the resources required to manage a spare country. We are too arrogant for our own good. I don’t want to borrow more money from the Chinese, to fight Iraqis, to be paid for later by my grandkids. We are wasting huge amounts of money. We are hurting the strength and stability of our country. This war is not making the world safer. This is not decreasing terror. This is not securing world energy supplies. And Bush is also using this war to destroy our constitution and our civil rights and democratic freedoms. He is truly the worst President this country has ever had. This other talk about saving Iraq from itself is absurd. Vietnam didn’t need our salvation. Iraq is no different.
JIM LEHRER: I got you.
New subject: immigration. What do you make of the Republicans' decision in the House, at least, all these hearings suddenly, rather than to proceed with the conference committee and get the thing resolved?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think with immigration, it's just hard with a country as divided as this one to come up with a big piece of legislation. There's no consensus in the country about this.
And as far as what the Republicans were trying to do with these hearings, the loudest voices are the most restrictionist voices. Any time you hold a hearing, you're going to get the most restrictionist, build-a-fence side.
And the politics -- I wish the politics were different, but the short-term politics are that it helps the Tom Tancredo, the people that just want to build a fence. The long-term politics helps the other side.
JIM LEHRER: Johnny?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: It‘s a meaningless issue. It‘s just a way to get Americans to stop thinking about Iraq, or the destruction of our constitution. It doesn‘t matter. There are far greater dangers facing our society. Our world xenophobia will never save us. What we need to do now, is save America from ourselves. We have become our own worst enemy. We have nothing to fear except fear itself. Republicans are really good at playing up fear, hatred, racism, and any other tactic that divides humans from one another.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I had someone tell me -- a Democrat tell me, if you ran, except for the Northeast, if you ran in the country by promising to cut off benefits to illegal immigrants, education, health care, you would win in almost every district in the country. That's short term.
Long term, this group is here to stay. And not only is the group here to stay, but the people who believe in a growing country revived by immigration are here to stay. And, you know, we've seen California.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Republicans apparently don‘t realize that states like Texas will become a majority Latino very soon. But thieves always think short term. They know they can modify their lies for each election. 100% of the Texas’ senators are lily white, despite the browning color of the state. Like Mexico, our government has ways of slowing down the browning of the government, despite the color of the population.
JIM LEHRER: Well, this is a time when we have to un-bond. Thank you both very much.
What do you make of that story? What do you think of this whole thing that's going on in Connecticut? And is it indicative of something larger that's going on in the country?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's indicative of one thing. They're both independent centrists in parties that are drifting to the extremes.
Shays is one of the few moderate Republicans left in the House; Lieberman is the most moderate Democrat in the Senate. And we saw a lot of the moderate Democrats get wiped away in the last 12 years, and I think in this election we're going to see a lot of moderate Republicans get wiped away, and the parties are going to be a little more polarized.
And I think, if you talk to those two men, as I'm sure Mark and I both have, they're not happy with the way the war is being waged. They supported it, but they've both been there. They've both offered suggestions on how to change it.
But as you go forward, they're thinking, "What do we do? Do we want to sign on with John Kerry's thing and get out very quickly?" And they both say no. And so they're really stuck with a war they didn't agree with the operation of, but they want to keep at it, and I think they're both principled, gutsy, gutsy guys.
JIM LEHRER: And speaking of Kerry and the Senate, there were two votes or votes on two amendments offered by the Democrats. A lot of people are making a lot out of those, what it says about the divisions within the Democratic Party this week. What do you say?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Divisions occur where there is real democracy. Only totalitarians unite perfectly. It‘s hard for democracy to exist inside the Democratic party these days, because they must compete with a highly fascist Republican party that isn‘t afraid to represent the interest of the powerful, and stand against the interest of the common middle class citizen. And while we can debate how popular or unpopular this war is with Americans, there is no question that virtually everybody in Iraq wants us to leave. What gives us the right to overrule the will of the Iraqi people?
As for Lieberman being a centrist, I would like to correct the record. Almost the entire Congress is conservative. Kucinich is one of the few who might qualify as a true liberal. There might be a few dozen who qualify as moderates. Maybe. But the vast majority of Congressmen range from far right wing to radical right wing. And the proof is in the pudding. Look how many are able to stand up against the needs of the average citizen. Yet, look how most are perfectly able to defend rich and powerful special interest.
DAVID BROOKS: Strictly on the politics, if the voters are confronted with two parties, one party is the Republicans who screwed up Iraq, and the other party is the Democrats who don't seem to -- who seem to want to cut and run, or seem to be defeatist, or who don't have a policy toward Iraq, well, then what are they going to choose?
That's actually a tough decision. And if you go back to Vietnam, liberals were right about Vietnam. But did it help liberals get a strong foreign policy credential for the next 30 years? No. It helped conservatives and Republicans, because people decided, "Well, they probably were wrong about Vietnam, but we're thinking about the next security threat, and we still trust conservatives to be the tough foreign policy types."
So the paradox of Vietnam -- and I think it could be, though I'm not certain about this -- is that you can be wrong about this war, but still gain long-term political benefit by seeming tough.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I would just like to sit here for a second and reflect on the total garbage Brooks just spewed out. The words “cut and run” I hear so often. It’s clearly an attempt to denigrate any antiwar position thru insult, thru sound byte imagery, not through reason. I guess I could say that Jesus was a cut and run kind of guy, and for the next 2000 years, only a handful of those years has been without war, so I guess his desires were a waste of time. I guess we are supposed to laugh at his idealism, or any politician who goes anywhere near that kind of thought.
It’s also funny to hear Books admit that the Republicans screwed up Iraq. But let’s put some numbers to this screw up. This war is going to outlast World War II. Defeating Hitler was easier and cheaper than this. And in this case, certain well positioned corporations are making a fortune on our misfortune. This is not a war about principal, nor about democracy or WMDS or the Iraqi people. This is a war about oil and profit. That’s it. That’s it. All of this flowery discussion beyond that is a pipe dream.
JIM LEHRER: What do you think about how remarkable it is that the Republicans are backing a policy that, you know, that two-thirds of the American people are not supporting?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think there are a couple of things. First, they believe in it. They believe you've got to...
JIM LEHRER: Can't cut?
DAVID BROOKS: If we cut and run, it just would be a disaster, which I think is right on the merits.
Second, the Republican Party is good at certain things. They're good at cutting taxes. They're good at accusing the Democrats of being soft on defense. So there is sort of a comfortable posture for them.
And then, finally, there is no escaping Iraq, so you might as well take that on.
JIM LEHRER: Might as well take that on?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: There is no disaster to leaving Iraq. There is no disaster to leaving Iraq. There is no disaster to leaving Iraq. Iraq is already a disaster. Leaving is easy. Just get on an airplane, and throttle it up to the sky. It’s not a big deal. Every day longer America stays, it becomes a greater disaster to us, our grandkids and to Iraqis. It is not up to Americans to decide what to do with Iraq. We are not their parents. We are not their guardians. We are not their government. We have no right to be there. If we leave, I know this sounds hard to believe, but they will find a way to get by without us. People all over the world manage to survive without America. We are far too arrogant about our role in this world, and it’s hurting us to believe in this myth of our paternity over the world. It’s not real, it’s not true, it doesn’t exist. And whatever leadership we did have over the world, Bush is doing his best to squander as quickly as possible. As long as we continue to buy this myth, certain military contractors are going to continue to rake in billions of dollars of our money. What do we get in return for this investment? A lot of blown up sand, and that‘s it. Somebody show me a balance sheet, with dollars on it, the proves out the profit we are going to get from this expensive maneuver. Iraq is going to not only be our Vietnam. It’s going to be our government’s Enron.
JIM LEHRER: OK. But what about the specifics -- what I want to get at is the specifics of what the Democratic proposals were. In other words, John Kerry had his proposal, and then there was the Reed -- what did that -- what signal does that send on behalf of the party, or if any?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: I don’t know yet. Kerry’s position on Iraq recently has been admirable, whereas Hillary’s position has been as bad as Bush’s. She actually things there is some mission to complete. We obviously have another Vietnam here. Republicans want to pretend they are good managers of war, but they are not being honest about their intentions. They have no intention of leaving Iraq anytime soon. And it doesn’t matter if Iraq is a mess to them because their masters - the oil executives - are getting very rich from this mess. Many Democrats are fearful of being antiwar, because all of Congress is virtually owned by the war industry. Anybody who dares to be as wise as, say, Kucinich, will suffer ridicule from the propaganda machine. I admire Kerry for taking a stand and revealing the names of wise senators brave enough to have some common sense. All of the others should hopefully lose their jobs, should the voters get wise to this. But I won’t hold my breath.
JIM LEHRER: It got 13 votes for Kerry‘s program.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: People forget that Democrats voted for this war, too. 13 is a big change from what it used to be. In fact, that kind of change is huge in a fascist autocracy like the US Congress, where very few need to ever fear actually losing their job, unless, of course, they criticize the military machine. Remember, fascist governments don’t lead. They don’t invent. They don’t innovate. When the government becomes a undemocratic, it shifts 100% of all initiative to the public. So expect Congress to be the last institution on the planet to learn that this war is a really bad idea. They will be the last to get reality. Not the first.
JIM LEHRER: Some would say that Kerry, by insisting on a vote on his amendment, highlighted the differences and hurt the Democrats?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh hogwash. Anybody who is afraid to step out of line is not a leader. Apparently, few of the politicians know their history well enough to remember Vietnam. I think the amnesia was strongly encouraged by certain well paid campaign donations. They are paid to forget. Remember what happened to Howard Dean when he became the very first to criticize Bush for going to Iraq? It propelled him to the top of the Democratic party. People who never give to campaigns got interested. He got so big, inside power started getting nervous, and they had to turn on the propaganda heat to do him in, take him out. But before they began to interfere with his image, his individualism had propelled him to the very top.
DAVID BROOKS: ... and I feel a little bad, but not too bad, because the Democrats -- as far as I can tell, the John Kerry position -- I've studied all the floor statements -- they said nothing about Iraq. There was a lot of talk about Karl Rove being bad. There was a lot of political posturing.
But, a, why would we want to commit now to some decision we're going to have to take in a year about withdrawing or not withdrawing?
Second, do we have any confidence that any Democrat or any Republican say anything about the capacity of the Iraqis to handle defense within a year? Do they talk about the capacity of the Iraqi army to transport people, to do intelligence, to actually keep the place safe? No, that was entirely missing.
Finally, if you're an Iraqi in Iraq and you're sitting there thinking, "Should I help the government or should I help the insurgents?" And you see a Senate vote saying, "Hey, the U.S. is going to be out of there in a year," you think, "Well, I'm not going to help the government. I'm not going to help the government that may fall in a year because the U.S. pulls out."
So to me, it was all -- when he got to the ground on Iraq, it was incredibly counterproductive, though it served some political purpose back home.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: We should leave Iraq because we do not have the money to pay for it. We can’t afford this war. We never could. America does not have the resources required to manage a spare country. We are too arrogant for our own good. I don’t want to borrow more money from the Chinese, to fight Iraqis, to be paid for later by my grandkids. We are wasting huge amounts of money. We are hurting the strength and stability of our country. This war is not making the world safer. This is not decreasing terror. This is not securing world energy supplies. And Bush is also using this war to destroy our constitution and our civil rights and democratic freedoms. He is truly the worst President this country has ever had. This other talk about saving Iraq from itself is absurd. Vietnam didn’t need our salvation. Iraq is no different.
JIM LEHRER: I got you.
New subject: immigration. What do you make of the Republicans' decision in the House, at least, all these hearings suddenly, rather than to proceed with the conference committee and get the thing resolved?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think with immigration, it's just hard with a country as divided as this one to come up with a big piece of legislation. There's no consensus in the country about this.
And as far as what the Republicans were trying to do with these hearings, the loudest voices are the most restrictionist voices. Any time you hold a hearing, you're going to get the most restrictionist, build-a-fence side.
And the politics -- I wish the politics were different, but the short-term politics are that it helps the Tom Tancredo, the people that just want to build a fence. The long-term politics helps the other side.
JIM LEHRER: Johnny?
JOHNNY FLATLINE: It‘s a meaningless issue. It‘s just a way to get Americans to stop thinking about Iraq, or the destruction of our constitution. It doesn‘t matter. There are far greater dangers facing our society. Our world xenophobia will never save us. What we need to do now, is save America from ourselves. We have become our own worst enemy. We have nothing to fear except fear itself. Republicans are really good at playing up fear, hatred, racism, and any other tactic that divides humans from one another.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I had someone tell me -- a Democrat tell me, if you ran, except for the Northeast, if you ran in the country by promising to cut off benefits to illegal immigrants, education, health care, you would win in almost every district in the country. That's short term.
Long term, this group is here to stay. And not only is the group here to stay, but the people who believe in a growing country revived by immigration are here to stay. And, you know, we've seen California.
JOHNNY FLATLINE: Republicans apparently don‘t realize that states like Texas will become a majority Latino very soon. But thieves always think short term. They know they can modify their lies for each election. 100% of the Texas’ senators are lily white, despite the browning color of the state. Like Mexico, our government has ways of slowing down the browning of the government, despite the color of the population.
JIM LEHRER: Well, this is a time when we have to un-bond. Thank you both very much.
posted by Johnny Flatline at 9:20 PM
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