But What About the Whataboutism, Huh?

Here's my position at the moment.  (If you don't like it, I have others.)

I take it for granted that Russia (the whole country, every dang one of 'em!) meddled in the 2016 US elections.  Probably all states meddle in other states' affairs, and the US is no exception.  It's like spying: every country does it.  When they catch another country's spies, they expel or punish them, which is fair enough; it's the pretense of violated innocence that I find insufferable.

What effect, if any, Russian meddling had on the outcome of the election is another question, which most commentators, professional and amateur alike, seem not to recognize; they evidently assume that if not for Russian interference, Clinton would have beaten Trump. On that question I'm agnostic.  Given the myriad of factors that affect electoral results, I don't think it's possible to isolate just one -- if you're really interested in understanding why Clinton lost and Trump won, that is, or in preventing such interference in the future.  I don't believe that most of those who are presently obsessed with Russia and Putin are interested.  As Seth Ackerman wrote recently at Jacobin:

Despite ubiquitous demands to “take the threat seriously,” none of these voices has plausibly explained what the US ought to do about it. Democratic senator Chuck Schumer demanded that Trump “cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won’t interfere in future elections.” And how exactly would that work? ...

It seems clear that the current Beltway panic isn’t really a reflection of the magnitude of the perceived threat from Moscow. It reflects panic that someone like Trump could win an election in the United States. If Russia’s actions did, in fact, shape the outcome — and I doubt they did — it was by changing a tiny, marginal number of votes in what would have been a close election anyway. Russian meddling is not the reason Trump was a viable presidential candidate.

Ackerman also wrote:

Think of it as “the expressive function of the Russia freakout.” Just as there is what Cass Sunstein called “the expressive function of law” — “the function of law in ‘making statements’ as opposed to controlling behavior” — there’s a purpose served by the constant keening over Putin. It conveys liberals’ sense of bewilderment and disorientation at a country they no longer recognize — a feeling not so different from that which motivated the Right’s manifold freakouts in the Obama era.

On both sides there’s a sense of loss about a bygone America that no longer exists: for the Right, the white, middle-class utopia of the Eisenhower years. For liberals, the upright decency of the Jed Bartlet administration. The problem with these fantasies is neither of them ever existed.

So it's easy enough to see why the most popular riposte to criticism of the Russia Freakout is an accusation of "whataboutism."  I've been seeing it used more lately -- which does not mean that it's absolutely more common, of course, only that I am seeing it more.  It's bipartisan, too: my Never-Trump Right Wing Acquaintance uses it just as Democratic loyalists do.  Of course, he's engaged in whatboutism himself many times, just as they have; indeed, many accusations of whataboutism are accompanied by more whataboutism.  Whataboutism is only bad when the wrong people use it. 

The first time I remember encountering whataboutism online was in the late 1980s, when a College Republican, defending the Reagan/Bush support for death squads in Central America asked me Whatabout the Sandinistas' human rights violations in Nicaragua?  (Which were, though real, much less severe than those in El Salvador or Guatemala.)  I don't think I missed a beat; I replied that the US should cut off all military aid to the Sandinistas.  I was being snotty, of course, because the US wasn't giving military aid to the Sandinistas: we were waging a vicious proxy war against Nicaragua, killing and wounding thousands of civilians.  I don't recall that my interlocutor had an answer to that; the home office hadn't provided one.

Whataboutism is much older than that, for reasons I'll get to presently.  It was a common response to US propaganda against the Soviet Union, both by the USSR and by apologists in the West. But the US propaganda was itself whataboutist: sure, things aren't perfect in the US or in our client states, but whatabout the terrible conditions behind the Iron Curtain?  (It's related to the popular parental response to kids who won't eat their spinach: Whatabout the starving children in India who'd love to have that spinach?)

But once you start to pay attention, you'll find whataboutism everywhere.  When American racists threw tantrums because the Kenyan Usurper was putting his big dirty feet on the sacred Oval Office Desk (a gift to America from Queen Victoria!), the usual and entirely proper rebuttal was to point out that his predecessors had done the same thing, and more.  When I pointed this out in a whataboutism thread on Twitter, one person indignantly replied that those rebuttals were just stating facts, they weren't meant to insult and mock the people they were rebutting (as the case we were debating allegedly did).  It must take quite a bit of determined effort to miss the scorn and mockery in the article I'd linked, but a partisan will make that effort.

Another classic example of whataboutism I've been citing comes from Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 "Beyond Vietnam" speech (emphasis added):

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

When someone accuses me (usually accurately) of whataboutism, I reply demurely that if whataboutism was good enough for Dr. King, it's good enough for me.

As this example indicates, whataboutism is really a basic component of critical thinking.  That emerges in Walter Kaufmann's formula for his canon, quoted here:

Confronted with a proposition, view, belief, hypothesis, conviction -- one's own or another person's -- those with high standards of honesty apply the canon, which commands us to ask seven questions: (1) What does this mean? (2) What speaks for it and (3) against it?  (4) What alternatives are available?  (5) What speaks for and (6) against each?  And (7) what alternatives are most plausible in the light of these considerations?

Now it may be objected that doing all this is rather difficult.  But has it ever been a condition of virtue that it required no great exertion?  On the contrary.

Patricia Miller-Roberts' discussion of demagoguery and debate is also helpful, if only to show that Kaufmann's formulation of critical thinking isn't unique to him.

Another entertaining example of whataboutism went viral recently when a young Anglo-Asian journalist yelled "I'm a communist, you idiot!" at Piers Morgan on a British talk show.  Morgan had been hectoring her about the protests greeting Donald Trump's visit to the UK, asking why there hadn't been any protests when Barack Obama came to call.  Now, in fact, there were protests during Obama's visits to the UK; it's hard to tell under the cross-yelling, but I think Ash Sarkar tried to say so.  Morgan finally referred to Obama as Sarkar's "hero," which prompted her now-famous reply.

Morgan did have a point, one that Obama's critics on the left made repeatedly during his time in office: people who objected to George W. Bush's policies and actions suddenly tolerated or celebrated them when they became Obama's policies.  Antiwar activism diminished during Obama's presidency, for example.  But not all activism disappeared: protests against Obama's immigration policies were big and troublesome enough to push him to try to disarm or appease his critics.  It doesn't matter what Morgan's intentions were, he raised a valid question, and Sarkar tried to answer it.

Whataboutism criers claim that whataboutism is intended to stop debate.  It can be, but so is the accusation of whataboutism.  (More whataboutism -- whatever shall we do, wherever shall we go?)  One reply to this objection would be that whataboutism can also be intended to start debate.  The trouble seems to be, as I've noticed before, that most people have no idea how debate works, what to do once their opponent make a first rebuttal.  They know their talking point, which they got from a meme on Facebook, but it stops there.  They've seen that this or that liberal hero/ine EVISCERATED or DESTROYED the Rethugs with a single well-chosen word, and they think they can do it too.  But those Rethug targets, far from being destroyed or eviscerated, are still in good health and at large.

The proper use of whataboutism is to find out how consistent someone's position is.  If they are outraged by Obama's feet on his desk, did they object to (or even notice) Bush's feet on the desk?  If Bush's surveillance of American citizens was outrageous, did it stop being outrageous when Obama did it?  Remember, though: a responsible critical thinker will ask him or herself such questions before an opponent raises them: not to win debating points, but to test whether he or she has a sound position.  As Nietzsche said, "A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!!!"

When I point out the US' record of interfering in other countries' elections, I'm not trying to stop debate: I want to start it.  I have some relevant and important questions for the Russiagaters.  For example, should other countries respond to US interference as they want the US to respond to Russian interference?  One difficulty is that it's not at all clear, as Seth Ackerman and Lyle Jeremy Rubin pointed out, how they want the US to respond.  As with liberals' vaunted concern over Syrian atrocities, they are upset and want everybody to know they're upset, but they don't know and don't much care what should be done.  Concrete suggestions, on the rare occasions when they were offered, consisted mainly of a US war against Syria.  As Ackerman pointed out, there's similar vagueness about what we should do about Russia.  There's a lot of posturing and xenophobic grandstanding, but little substance. Some measures for better cybersecurity have been enacted, but they are mostly not being implemented; Ackerman linked to a Politico story which reported that although millions of dollars had been appropriated to help states improve voting security, little of that money has been used.  But, I suppose, it's whataboutism to bring that up.

Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows -- and Vladimir Putin's Little Pony

It's interesting that the usual suspects among LGBT advocacy groups have not condemned the New York Times depicting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as lovers.  I mean, GLAAD, our own anti-defamation league?

Under Greenwald's challenge I find the predictable absurd defenses of the Times cartoon.  This one , for instance:

i dont really have an issue with it. it clearly gets under his skin and im 100% more for making fun of trump by calling putin his boyfriend than...not doing that (i am a queer male and i speak for the trees)

I'm not sure I fully understand the bit about being "more for making trump by calling putin his boyfriend than ... not doing that."  So "not doing that" would be a bad thing?  The only way to mock, let alone criticize Trump is to fag-bait him?  The Resistance is more intellectually, morally and comedically bankrupt than even I thought.

This one was somewhat original, though:

I don’t think they’re going to condemn a depiction of 2 people in love. It mocks Trump bc Trump does seem to be in love w Putin sometimes. But trying to claim making out, nipple twisties & unicorns riding thru as gay stereotypes is a stretch. All lovers so [sic] those.

So the Times was just trying to depict Trump and Putin in a positive way, as a loving couple?  Ooookayyyy.  I'll admit that I'm not sure I agree with Greenwald's rhetoric about "disgusting gay stereotype[s]"; I'm always wary when gay people denounce stereotypes.  Just as straight bigots who denounce Teh Gay often turn out to be gay themselves, gay people who denounce the stereotypes generally aren't as non-stereotypical as they like to think they are.

As always, the best way to evaluate the Times animation is to plug some different values into the equation.  Imagine that the Times produced an animation which depicted Trump and Putin according to the grand American tradition of the minstrel show.  The comedic possibilities are considerable: Trump and Putin as a pair of shuffling, watermelon-eating, handkerchief-headed darkies, robbing the sacred henhouse of Democracy to fill their bellies -- until a haint played by Robert Mueller comes along, Don and Vlad's eyes bug out, their hair stands on end, and they cry "Feets do yore stuff!" as they light out.  Pretty cool, don't you think?  I bet a lot of white Resistance liberals would eat it up. But there'd certainly be an outcry, condemnation, righteous denunciation of the Times for using these disgusting stereotypes.

There'd be defenses too: of course every woke liberal knows that being black or eating watermelon or raiding the henhouse aren't bad things in themselves, but Trump (and probably Putin as well) would surely see the depiction as degrading, so degrade away!  I believe, though, that the condemnation would win out, because white liberals are better trained in rejecting racist humor than straight liberals are in rejecting antigay humor.  Fag jokes, as I've pointed out before, are common and acceptable among straight liberals who piously support gay marriage and gays in the military, just good clean fun, and this was true years before Trump ran for the Presidency.

I just remembered Barry Blitt's infamous New Yorker cover depicting the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad reacting with consternation as another man taps his foot under a restroom stall.  This was supposed to be sophisticated satire, but I thought it was clumsy and tone-deaf.  I still think so, and I think it revealed a lot about the artist, the magazine, and its audience that a mere linking of an official US enemy to homosexuality is worth a sly chuckle.  That cartoon, along with the even more controversial Obama cover, featuring Barry and Michelle as black militants sharing a terrorist fist bump as a US flag burns in the White House fireplace, are for me further evidence that, contrary to Jon Schwarz's claim, liberals don't necessarily do analogies or humor any better than conservatives do.  "I'm just trying to make myself laugh," Blitt told NPR.  I thought he gets paid to make other people laugh as well?

But Some of My Best Friends Are Cock Holsters!

Just as I was about to let Stephen Colbert's unfortunate "joke" about Trump and Putin sink slowly into the past, various people kept kicking it back to the front of my consciousness.  So, for example, Roy Edroso dismissed US Representative Jason Chaffetz last week as "a little bitch who remained lashed to his great white Hillary whale long after everyone else abandoned ship because pretending to be a tough guy is all he knows how to do."  Edroso got his metaphors a bit mixed up there, but these are troubled times and we've got to do something.  Then, yesterday, Edroso mocked country singer Toby Keith, who performed for an all-male audience in Saudi Arabia during Trump's visit there:

I like to imagine Keith getting a call: "Hey Tobe! It's me, Faisal. How'd you like to pick up a quarter mil easy money? All you have to is change some lyrics -- you know, 'Pellegrino for My Horses, Mango Nectar for My Men.'" Or maybe it's not that kind of relationship, and Keith came wrapped in a rug?

The link goes to a clip from the 1963 Hollywood blockbuster Cleopatra, in which Elizabeth Taylor has herself delivered to Rex Harrison wrapped in a rug, thereby signaling her sexual availability or something.  So Edroso wants us to think of Keith as Faisal's little bitch.

Then this morning liberal tweeter Yes You're Racist invited Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to "eat my entire ass."  YYR is a better person than I am; being rimmed by McConnell would just make me feel dirty.  (Or as the lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel had a character say in one of her early strips, "I thought sodomy meant having sex with a Republican.")

These examples, which of course could be multiplied, are useful partly because they disprove the straight-liberal-guy protestation that calling somebody a faggot is not a reference to gay sexual practices, that they are totally cool with gays boning gays, they totally support gay marriage, they just don't like "Servants of power.  You know - faggots."  But as Colbert and Edroso and YYR show, they equate being a servant of power with being penetrated sexually, which they regard with visceral repulsion.  So how do they think of the women in their lives?  I probably shouldn't ask.

Another reason I almost didn't write about all this was that Brandon U. Sutton wrote an excellent piece about the controversy at Progressive Army.  Sutton said most of what I'd intended to say.  For example:

First, and while this may seem churlish, what Colbert said was not even particularly clever or funny. Arguably, it was barely even a joke, since jokes have a certain structure from which they derive some of their humor. Colbert saying that the only thing Donald Trump’s mouth is good for is as a “cock holster” was just an insult that people found funny.

"Funny" is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but I think he's right.  "Cock holster" is the kind of epithet sixth-grade boys consider hilarious: not because they have any personal experience of fellatio from either end, but because they're extremely anxious about bodies.  Which reminded me of a couple of sketches from Colbert's show during last year's campaign, in which a young boy played Trump's "nickname strategist."  It appears that Colbert took the boy on as one of his writers.

That many conservatives objected to Colbert's insult was unsurprising -- not because it was "homophobic," which they would normally consider a good thing, but because it targeted someone on their side.  If, during the 2008-2016 period, some comic had called Barack Obama a cock holster for Benjamin Netanyahu, would liberal Democrats have considered it just a joke?  For that matter, I recall Colbert himself adopting a stance of unironic submission to then-President Obama, who ordered him to get a military buzz cut to show his solidarity with Our Troops in Iraq. "Servant of power" would have been a perfect characterization for Colbert in those days, and depending on whom he's bending the knee to, it still is.

I don't want Colbert fired.  I just want to name what he's doing.  His liberal defenders have had to resort to right-wing insults against his critics, such as "virtue signalling."  But virtue-signalling is Colbert's stock in trade.  One Colbertista on Twitter responded to me in those terms: "Thanks for another example of our virtue signaling culture where everyone is perpetually offended."  To which I replied, "I'm not 'offended' by his homophobic insults; I'm a faggot, they just roll off. They just undercut his signalled virtue."

But there's another thought: one reason we're not supposed to say such naughty things is that they'll drive gay kids to suicide.  So why does Colbert get a pass on it?  Because he's on Our Side, one of the Good Guys, and anyway, liberals are happy to use homophobic / misogynist rhetoric against their enemies.  (Don't imagine that kids wouldn't hear about what Colbert said, even if it weren't freely available the next day on YouTube.  That's another right-wing fantasy, that children will know nothing of homosexuality if we can just keep Teh Gay out of the media.)  I'm not seriously worried about Colbert affecting youth-suicide rates, of course: I'm just savoring the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

A Thinking President, Like Western Civilization, Would Be a Good Idea

A Facebook friend posted the above meme from The Rachel Maddow Fan Page.  The stupidity it displays boggles my mind, though goodness knows I shouldn't be surprised any more.  The comments under the Maddow post are even more repulsively fawning, but there too I shouldn't be surprised.

I'd be pleased to have a President -- for that matter, public officials at all levels -- who can wrestle with complex problems, who thinks first and sends in the tanks as a last resort.  Unfortunately we don't have one.  Instead we have a President who constantly threatens and often wages war, who consistently supports dictatorships over democracy, and who kills civilians by remote control and then jokes about it.  Instead we have a President who tramples on civil liberties, ruthlessly suppresses whistleblowers, and supports violent repression against peaceful protesters at home.  (Not just against the Occupy Movement, but against protesters at the NATO conference in Chicago in May 2012.)  And let's not forget how Obama loyalists slobbered over their guy after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

And that's just Obama.  Bill Clinton, the Rhodes Scholar, was also touted as a great mind by his partisans, but he was also a bloodthirsty thug who killed many innocent people while in office.  He and his wife, later to be the US Secretary of State, get along well with dictators, whom they regard as members of their family.  For that matter, Rachel Maddow herself is a militarist who would probably have joined the American Armed Forces if not for the ban on gays and lesbians in the military.  In general, Democrats have not distinguished themselves either as intellectuals or as peacemakers.

Which doesn't mean, of course, that the Republicans are any better; it only means that Democratic loyalists are in no position to cast the first stone.