1 Boring Old Man

In my last post, I was trying to follow some of the neoconservative networks, not having much luck, but the whole time, I’ve been wondering what ties all these people together. They are Apocolyptic Crackpots who seem determined to get us involved in a World War with the Arabs – any Arabs. They slid into our government from a variety of [wealthy] Right Wing Think Tanks and other well-funded Organizations. A lot of them are Jewish pro-Israel people, many have ties with Corporate America, others are from the Reagan years, or even the Goldwater years. They seem to be connected with each other, moving seamlessly from one group to another. There are a number of themes to their story – Hawks, pro-business, pro-Israel, anti-Arab, anti-Liberal, preaching small-government but running big government. They actually seem to believe the "ends justify the means" and their ethics have atrophied along the way. Their public style is almost uniformly sarcastic, demeaning, while their private dealings are clandestine and manipulative. They’re all Republicans, but not all Republicans are part of their in-crowd. I’m not even sure Bush, and maybe not even Cheney, are in the in-crowd. And they seem to be following some kind of Ayn Rand, Leo Strauss philosopy, but the things they do don’t come off as very philosphical. Whatever ties them together, they all seem determined to change the kind of country we are in some very fundamental way, and the direction of the change isn’t all on the table. They are politically, Fascists – in the sense that Fascism is the rule of the Powerful. Although they seem to be able to engage the traditional macho "Hawks," most of them are frankly kind of wimpy – draft dodgers, semi-academics, etc. They talk big, but send others into battle.They actually appear to be working at not being seen as one group, yet they all seem connected in a myriad of ways.