My friend Lawrence recently circulated a spirited attack on Washington Post columnist and neo-conservative promoter Charles Krauthammer on the grounds that he previously considered the former progressive to be simply mendacious but is now convinced that the paraplegic warmonger is actually insane. He wouldn’t be the first observer to question the credentials of Mr. Krauthammer. In fact, The American Prospect declared that he is "very possibly the worst journalist working in America today, a relentlessly pernicious force, never right about anything, who feels his commentary should not be shackled by the small-minded bonds of accuracy or logic.”
Strong words. My own observations of Mr. Krauthammer’s background and philosophy reveal this he is, indeed, not mendacious or insane. Instead, he is simply, in his special way, describing what I call the “polar principle.” Allow me to explain.
Mr. Krauthammer lost the use of his legs in a diving action whilst attending Harvard Medical School. This incident became the defining incident of his life and his relentless bitterness for those who walk unassisted became a pathological desire to create other people in his image. This is the secret that drives him to promote his militaristic philosophy. However, this does not explain the polar principle, it only elucidates his motivation for seeking out the theory.
As a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in the mid-1970s, Mr. Krauthammer discovered a mild form of mania associated with bi-polar disorder. Shortly after this discovery, he left his medical practice to serve in the Carter Administration as well as a speech writer for Walter Mondale. It was in those initial months, as he transformed himself from a medical doctor to a political theorist that set him in stone as the world’s leading proponent of what he would likely call polar plexis. I prefer the more descriptive term, polar principle.
In any event, shortly before Mr. Mondale‘s presidential ambitions descended into oblivion, he was frequently heard discussing world events in a polaresque fashion on his stump speeches. In one small Iowa cow town, Mr. Mondale went on for ten minutes, ordering the cattlemen to align the polar plexis of their herd to achieve more efficient meat to bone ratios. Needless to say, the cattlemen were not inclined to follow his metaphysical suggestions. However, during a visit to a local dairy, Mondale and Krauthammer came across the defining slogan for the campaign. While Krauthammer was sitting in his wheelchair at a milking station, idly manipulating the udders and squirting Mondale in a manner reminiscent of the Zoolander gas station scene, he let out a diabolical giggle and said, “where’s the beef, where’s the beef.”
Of course, with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency, Mr. Krauthammer transformed himself from a liberal democrat to a neo-conservative. When the Berlin Wall came down, the world sighed in relief.
Not so, Mr. Krauthammer. While pie-in-the-sky liberals were talking about peace dividends and multi-lateralism, he was developing what would be his swan song. By melding his psychiatric theories of bi-polar disorder to the world of foreign policy, he developed “The Unipolar Moment,” and explicated it in the Foreign Affairs journal. Indeed, his approach would have the United States reject international cooperation and use our unique military position in the world to grab resources and smack down enemies for a few decades before, presumably, The Unipolar Moment became flaccid from overuse.
As the Washington consensus moved on his ideas and implemented a modified polar principle in its response to the events of September 11, 2001, Mr. Krauthammer was finally seen as a kind of modern day Churchill for standing strong in defense of militarism in the face of a nagging world peace and prosperity. In 2004, he declared that in an attempt to create Iraq in our image, “there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11.”
In 2006, Mr. Krauthammer wrote that "neoconservativism "is the maturation of a governing ideology whose time has come." The original "fathers of neoconservatism" were “former liberals or leftists”. More recently, they have been joined by "realists, newly mugged by reality," such as Condoleezza Rice, Richard Cheney and George W. Bush, who "have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature."
I won’t attempt to deconstruct the above quote. My limited intelligence in the face of such wisdom is daunted. Let’s just say that he believes the original neoconservative ex-liberals are now made whole by comingling with the maturity of President Bush, Cheney and Rice.
Finally, my friend Lawrence incorrectly concludes that Mr. Krauthammer's laudatory comments about current Presidential candidate Fred Thompson as a sign of insanity. I disagree. I have attached a brief transcript of President Nixon and co-conspirators discussing the intellectual capacity of Fred Thompson immediately after Howard Baker appointed Thompson to lead a defense of the President against the Watergate charges:
"Baker has appointed Fred Thompson as minority counsel," Haldeman is heard saying on one tape.
"Oh shit, that kid," Nixon responds.
"I guess so," Haldeman replies.
Nixon worried that Thompson's Democratic counterpart, Sam Dash, would outsmart Thompson.
"Well, Dash is too smart for that kid," Nixon says on another tape from March 16, 1973.
"Sure. Runs circles around him," agrees an aide, John Dean.
To put Mr. Krauthammer's comments about Thompson in perspective, it is important to understand that many of the neoconservative theoreticians are former Trotskyists, like U.S. Economist Lyndon LaRouche. Like LaRouche, Mr. Krauthammer finds jobs for useful idiots and, make no mistake, Fred Thompson is an idiot.
In summation, he is neither a liar or insane. He is a man so far ahead of this time that we mere mortals are unable to see the significance of the bi-polar psychiatric transformation of reality to a unipolar political moment. God speed, Mr. Krauthammer. May that unipolar moment stand tall and never waver, never fall.
1 comments:
Mindless drivel.
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