Folks are talking about a short piece in the New Yorker by George Packer, plus a brief comment by Andy Sullivan. This is what Ben Smith said at The Politico (“Liberal despair: Age of irrationality“):

A couple of influential writers broadly in sympathy with Obama today float the same notion: That we’re living in a fundamentally unreasonable age, that voters basically can’t be trusted, and that democracy is just barely muddling through.

Anyone who spends much time covering American politics feels this sometimes. At the same time, it’s a lot easier to think this when your side is losing politically.

First, let me say that neither Packer nor Sullivan come out and say that the people can’t be trusted, and I don’t think they meant to imply that the people can’t be trusted, although I can see how one might read them that way. However, if it’s true (as polls suggest) that voters are about to hand the House and maybe the Senate back to the Republicans because they are angry with Democrats for failing to fix the mess the Republicans made, then yeah, the democracy thing doesn’t seem to be working any more.

Here is a bit of what Packer said:

Nine years later, the main fact of our lives is the overwhelming force of unreason. Evidence, knowledge, argument, proportionality, nuance, complexity, and the other indispensable tools of the liberal mind don’t stand a chance these days against the actual image of a mob burning an effigy, or the imagined image of a man burning a mound of books. Reason tries in its patient, level-headed way to explain, to question, to weigh competing claims, but it can hardly make itself heard and soon gives up…. unreason, cheered on by cable news, has won the day. We have undeniably gone sour on interfaith tolerance. We have turned inward in sullen exhaustion.

Andy Sullivan adds:

It is as if America is intent on destroying itself, its civil society, its fiscal future, and its next generation in an endless fit of mutual recrimination, neurotic nationalism, and religious division.

Yes, but this has been true for some time, and as I recall Andy was doing his bit to help it along not that long ago.

Now, we hear from Digby:

The fact that the VORI* and all of his worshipers among the intellectual elite fail to acknowledge (or even notice) the radicalism of his opponents is just as much of a problem as the radicalism itself. They have enabled it all along the way. In fact, I would have to say that it’s also a form of “epistemic closure” at this point. Anyone who is writing about the unreasoned radicalism of the right wing as if it just manifested itself out of nowhere has at least been in denial for well over a decade and a half.

[*VORI = Voice of Reason Incarnate, a sarcastic reference to President Obama]

The term “epistemic closure” apparently has been kicked around in certain conservative circles of late as a shorthand for ideological intolerance and misinformation. For the record, some conservatives have come out against these things.

Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush’s administrations, wrote that in the last few years, “epistemic closure” had become much worse among “the intelligentsia of the conservative movement.” He later added that the cream of the conservative research institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, had gone from presenting informed policy analyses to pumping out propaganda.

It’s as if Barlett and others are waking up from a dream and haven’t acclimated to reality yet. The AEI and Heritage have always existed to pump out propaganda. They’ve been doing it from the beginning. The propaganda didn’t become propaganda in the minds of Bartlett et al. until, for some reason, they began to lag behind in the Right’s lemming dash to the cliffs. They’ve dropped out of the stampede to watch the other lemmings dashing by, so to speak, and now they see that the lemmings are irrational. What they haven’t yet admitted to is that the lemmings always were irrational, and that they also are lemmings.

Put another way, the American Right (which is not necessarily the same thing as American political conservatism) has been motivated by greed, bigotry, paranoia and ignorance all along. But awhile back some highly educated righties came along and slapped a veneer of intellectualism, or at least a whiff of eastern Ivy League-ism and big words (like “epistemic”), on top of the mess, to make it socially presentable. William F. Buckley is coming to mind here, although there were others.

But Buckley is gone, in more ways than one. “Movement conservatism” has broken completely with any pretense of rationality and reverted to its anti-intellectual roots. In doing so, it is leaving behind those conservatives who were trying to stay in the Buckley mold and pretend (especially to themselves) there was a rational foundation to their greed, bigotry, paranoia and ignorance.

Meanwhile, all these years, the rest of the nation’s media and political elite have been stuck in polite denial that the Republican Party was being taken over by barking mad whackjobs. It’s like a family in denial about Uncle Frank’s pedophilia or Aunt Ruthie’s alcoholism. It was right in front of them, but they wouldn’t see it. Some, like Ben Smith, still refuse to see it (“At the same time, it’s a lot easier to think this when your side is losing politically.” — it’s just politics as usual, see).

But I’ve wandered off a bit from the stated topic, which is can the people be trusted? The problem is not the people. The people, I think, are capable of making reasonable and rational decisions when they understand an issue. But to understand an issue, you have to have knowledge of an issue. Knowledge, as in actual facts.

And that’s the rub, because the American people are not getting clear, factual explanations of anything. Whether the issue is global warming, health care reform, extending the Bush tax cuts, or an Islamic center in lower Manhattan, the American people are forming opinions based on lies and propaganda, because that’s all they’ve got to go on. They are confused and exasperated, and understandably so. “Sullen exhaustion” indeed.

It all comes back to whether news media are able, and willing, to stop being the submissive conduits of misinformation and resume the job of informing and educating rather than entertaining. And it also depends on a lot of people in politics and media waking up from the polite denial and facing reality. I’m not holding my breath.

It’s a tea party versus GOP establishment smackdown in Delaware. Tea party candidate Christine O’Donnell, dubbed by Tbogg a Palin 2.0 Bimbot, could win the GOP primary contest against the Establishment choice, Mike Castle, a former governor and congressman.

So the righties are squaring off against each other, defending their positions in the only ways they know how — character assassination and death threats.

The Weekly Standard is painting O’Donnell as less stable than a three-legged card table, while Little Lulu links Castle to The Devil Incarnate, George Soros.

Nate Silver says O’Donnell has something like a 17 percent chance of winning the general election, which of course is why he establishment is in a panic.

However, that’s just one Senate race. The bad news is that Nate projects the GOP has a 2 in 3 chance of taking the House in November.

Protest Day seems to have passed without major incident. I heard third-hand that there were more cops than protesters. You don’t mess with the NYPD.

I haven’t heard crowd estimates, but Poison Pam is claiming 40,000 attendees for her side. Applying the standard hyperbole:reality formula for wingnut crowd estimate claims, that puts the actual number at somewhere between 12 and 30. I assume there may have been a few more people than that, though.

From New York Newsday:

Corey, a retired high schoolteacher from Ossining, was looking for the anti-Islamic center protest that was to be held two blocks away. He carried a sign that read: “Christ turned the other cheek. Muhammad never did. He beheaded instead.”

So, Mr. Corey, whose example do we then choose to follow — Christ’s or Muhammad’s? I’m not seeing much cheek-turning there, or among the so-called conservative “Christians” who stood around in front of the White House tearing pages out of Q’rans. At least they read the pages before tearing them, which is more than they seem to do with their Gospels.

Well, I’m not in lower Manhattan counter-protesting. Miss Lucy isn’t feeling well, and we have a vet appointment in a couple of hours. Priorities.

In the New York Times, Samuel Freedman writes that there was a Mulsim prayer room in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was destroyed, of course, and many of the people who used to pray there were lost.

Naturally, the jolly crew at Weasel Zippers responded with the usual magnanimity:

If there was a prayer room there, why did the muzz terrorists destroy it and kill fellow muslims against the teaching of Mo?

Possibly for the same reason a couple of the perps didn’t bother to attend mosque and were known to drink alcohol, contrary to Muslim rules, according to the 9/11 commission. Deep down, their motivations may not have been all that religious.

You Moosies call your fucking pretend god from someplace else. GZ is sacred ground. You leftist schmucks and yentas can go join them.

Yentas? The weasels are being anti-semitic now?

Anyone muslim dumb enough to associate with the kufr deserves to die

I’m not even going to comment on that one.

So, in the leftists twisted and warped way of logic, one small room is somehow magically transferred into a huge monsterous building? Than maybe that greek orthodox church that the city of NY keeps denying a permit to build should be built as a huge cathedral. Would only seem fair.

Regarding the Greek Orthodox church — the church in question was a very small one destroyed in the terrorist attacks. Fox News keeps reporting that the city of New York won’t let the congregation rebuild the church, but of course that’s not the whole story. The congregation didn’t want to rebuild on the old site, because it was very small; only 1,200 square feet. So the congregation either sold or entered into an agreement to sell the property to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2008, and also negotiated to acquire a bigger plot in the same neighborhood.

They seem to want the spot where the Deutsche Bank Building is/was. The Deutsche Bank Building was heavily damaged on 9/11, and a decision was made to demolish it and start over. But anything involving the Deutsche Bank Building ends up getting unbelievably complicated, which is why the bleeping building is still being demolished. I swear, the property is haunted. Anyway, there seems to be some confusion as to who is first in line to get the property, jinxed as it is, once the old building is totally gone.

And there are all kinds of issues involving whether the congregation can come up with the money to build what they want to build, and whether their plans for an underground garage might somehow hold up other building plans at Ground Zero and the neighborhood. It’s a big mess. If the congregation had just rebuilt the old church on the old property it would probably be finished now, although I don’t blame them for wanting something bigger.

Of course, on the Right, what is complicated becomes very simple. New York City won’t let the congregation build its church because the city doesn’t like Christians.

The ever sensitive New York Post has published a map showing that bodies of 9/11 victims were found outside the “ground zero” site, meaning that the sacred and holy part of lower Manhattan is actually much bigger than just ground zero. Apparently a body was found only one block away from the proposed site of the Park Place Islamic center, so of course it would be sacrilege to build there. Bars and porn video shops OK, but no Islamic center.

Leslie Minora asks,

What if the human remains found — chillingly, as the Post says — so close to the site of the proposed mosque were actually those of a Muslim victim of the attacks? Would that make a difference to people?

Only in that Weasel Zippers readers would want to find the spot and pee on it.

An editorial in the New York Times describes the development of Ground Zero. The memorial garden is supposed to be finished for this time next year. A museum will be under the garden, which some are taking to be some kind of insult to the 9/11 victims. Like New York would do that. But from underground people will be able to see some of the original foundation of the World Trade Center, as well as a preserved steel beam and the “survivor’s staircase,” a granite staircase that served as an escape route for thousands of people. So I think it works.

So Rush Limbaugh and The Bad Terry Jones graduated from Cape Girardeau Central High School together, class of ’69. Cape Girardeau has a lot to answer for.

It’s been at least forty years, if I’m remembering right, since I’ve been in Cape Girardeau, but I remember it as a pretty town on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. It’s a college town, believe it or not, home of Southeast Missouri State University. It was the state teachers college way back when. And it’s not all that small, as towns go. The 2008 population was 37,370, Wikipedia says.

Full disclosure, I graduated high school in ’69, also. Depressing. At least I didn’t live in Cape Girardeau.

As I understand it, the book burning stunt is suspended but not canceled. So we don’t know if it will happen or not.

The interesting thing about the Bad Terry Jones story is the role of media, which is explored today in the New York Times by Brian Stelter. The Bad Terry Jones has been pulling Islam-bashing stunts for at least a year, apparently, and everyone ignored him until Islamophobia became hot news. And then Jones and his stunts became fodder for the News Beast That Must Be Fed.

Quick, somebody, find a pretty blonde having an affair with a married congressman and kidnap her to distract the Beast. Just kidding.

According to Justin Elliott at Salon, the Bad Terry Jones saga has been a big story in the Middle East since July. The Middle East press picked up the story before major U.S. media did, says Elliott. Thanks to the magic of the Intertubes, a tiny local story can be a fart heard round the world.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has an op ed in the New York Times in which he declares the cultural center will be built:

We are proceeding with the community center, Cordoba House. More important, we are doing so with the support of the downtown community, government at all levels and leaders from across the religious spectrum, who will be our partners. I am convinced that it is the right thing to do for many reasons.

He’s calling it Cordoba House; OK, fine.

At Cordoba House, we envision shared space for community activities, like a swimming pool, classrooms and a play space for children. There will be separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths.

So if containing a Muslim prayer space makes any building a “mosque,” does that mean the Center will be a “church” and a “synagogue” as well?

It really is a lovely essay, and once again my impression is that the imam is a good-hearted, sincere man who means exactly what he says. Andy Sullivan:

As the far right seems to relish a clash of civilizations, his op-ed strikes me as so transparently constructive, so evidently in the interests not only of domestic peace but of strategic victory against Jihadist terror that I’m again at a a loss to understand why so many have reacted so ferociously to this project.

Because they are howling ignorant crazy bigots, that’s why.

I do not believe that we defeat them by empowering them, by giving them noxious symbols of Western intolerance in order to justify their own far far worse bigotry. We defeat them by the example of our toleration and the precision of our military power. The rest is poison.

Well, yes, exactly, and it remains astonishing that anyone bright enough to remember his own phone number can’t see that. There are border collies that could figure this out.

Elsewhere, Laurie Goodstein reports for the New York Times:

Prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders held an extraordinary “emergency summit” meeting in the capital on Tuesday to denounce what they called “the derision, misinformation and outright bigotry” aimed at American Muslims during the controversy over the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero. …

… The Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, said: “To those who would exercise derision, bigotry, open rejection of our fellow Americans of a different faith, I say, shame on you. As an evangelical, I say to those who do this, you bring dishonor to those who love Jesus Christ.”

That’s good to see.

Update: the Hartford, Connecticut, City Council steps up —

The Council announced Tuesday that it has invited local imams to perform Islamic invocations at the beginning of the Council meetings in September.

An e-mail from the Common Council called it “an act of solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters.”

I don’t have to tell you that the rightie blogs are having apoplectic fits. I think if they use the word “dhimmitude” much more they’re going to wear it out; the poor thing won’t have enough strength left to display on a monitor.

See also New York magazines tongue-in-cheek “Feisal Abdul Rauf Details His Harrowing Vision for Terror-Victory Mosque.”

Update: In Gainesville, Florida, home of the Quran burning pastor —

At least two dozen Christian churches, Jewish temples and Muslim organizations in Gainesville have mobilized to plan inclusive events – some will read from the Quran at their own weekend services – to counter what Jones is doing. A student group is organizing a protest across the street from the church on Sept. 11.

Gainesville’s new mayor, Craig Lowe, who during his campaign became the target of a Jones-led protest because he is openly gay, has declared Sept. 11 Interfaith Solidarity Day in the city.

James Ford is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and also an ordained Soto Zen priest, and his take on religion is not exactly the same as, say, Franklin Graham’s. I think some of you might enjoy reading his most recent sermon — “Jesus Was a Carpenter: A Sermon on Religion and Politics.”

A hate-mongering “pastor” from Florida named Terry Jones is making himself famous by promoting his “Burn a Quran Day.” The best part of this story is that Jones is head of something called the Dove World Outreach Center. Some things snark themselves. But a little more snark doesn’t hurt —

News of the pastor’s hate festival has reached Afghanistan and sparked protests. Gen. David Petraeus said that the stunt puts the lives of U.S. troops in danger and damages the “war effort.

Whereupon some rightie bloggers began whining that they have a right to burn Qurans. For example,

For the record, I oppose book burnings on general principle. There are much more effective ways to fight Islamization and creepin’ sharia in the West.

But it brings to mind a question my pal Greg over at Rhymes With Right raised a while ago: If you can burn a flag , why can’t you burn a Qu’ran?

The answer of course is that you can.

It’s revealing that the Left is absolutely bat bonkers about the Qu’ran barbecue but has always been totally supportive of burning the American flag as a matter of Constitutionally mandated free speech if nothing else.

Of course the pastor has a right to burn Qurans. I haven’t heard of anyone, including any part of the justice system, trying to stop him. Further, General Petraeus was not ordering people to not burn Qurans. He was saying, if you do this, you are putting the lives of troops in danger and hurting the war effort. It was a statement of fact.

It’s also a fact that if Jones goes through with the stunt, and American troops die as a result, and the work to de-radicalize Afghanistan is set back, Jones will suffer no consequences. He will remain free to throw more public temper tantrums that hurt his country as often as he likes. Because this is America, and people are free to express themselves.

For the past several days, one argument being made about the Park51 development in lower Manhattan is that “just because you have a right to do something doesn’t make it right.” And of course, that’s true. You have a right to smear yourself with molasses and sit on an anthill, for example, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

However, in the case of Park51, the arguments against the “rightness” of it are not just subjective; most of them are unadulterated bunk. There is no rational reason to not build an Islamic Center on Park Place. The building was functioning as a mosque, a place for Islamic prayer services, for several months before the controvery kicked off, and it didn’t bother anyone until a few hotheads decided to raise a stink about it.

But in the case of the Quran burning, there could be real consequences. U.S. troops could die. The effort in Afghanistan, into which this nation has poured considerable blood and treasure, could be set back.

We could argue, of course, whether anything tangible could ever be accomplished in Afghanistan through any sort of military action. I am skeptical. I personally think there was a window of opportunity that closed at least five years ago. General Petraeus, however, seems to think he can accomplish something, but the Quran burning will be setting him back.

One would think those people who have supported U.S. military action against Islamic radicals in the Middle East would think, wow, maybe the Quran burning is a really bad idea, and request of Pastor Jones that he cancel his plans. Just because someone has a right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

And I think if I had a son or daughter in Afghanistan right now, I’d be mightly pissed off at Pastor Jones.

I also think that people who have basked in the romance of living in a “time of war” — while they were safe at home, of course — would be eager to step in and do their bit. In past wars, the government often requested that citizens restrict their speech for the war effort. You know, make some sacrifices. I guess sacrifices aren’t fun.

So when John the Power Tool asks, “Still, is it not highly problematic when a senior military officer warns American citizens against exercising their undoubted First Amendment rights?” the answer is, I think it’s problematic that the Tool thinks this is problematic. Again, no one is stopping Jones from burning Qurans. But if we’re really taking this “time of war” mystique seriously, then civilians have a part to play.

I hate to think how the Tool would react if he were subjected to World War II-style rationing. The “free market” types would riot in the streets, or else at the sight of a ration book they’d melt into puddles like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Whatever happened to “let’s roll?”

Instead of thoughtfully considering what the General requested, wngnut responses range from So what? They’re killing the troops, anyway; what’s a few more? to The general is a good dhimmi willing to trash the constitution for the privilege of kissing muslim butts.

But the Constitution is not trashed here, because the government will not stop Terry Jones. Neither Petraeus nor anyone else is calling for the government to step in and arrest Jones so that he can’t hold his Q’ran burning. They’re just requesting of him to not do it for the good of his country.

So, dear wingnuts, no one is depriving Terry Jones of his right to free expression, which in this case will be showing the world that he’s a hypocritical buffoon. The general is just pointing out that this could get troops killed and set back the war effort. That’s part of his job.

But this is why I titled the post “emotional puberty and wingnuttia.” They’re responding like, well, juveniles. They wanna do what they wanna do, and if you say you think it’s a bad idea, you’re just being mean.

I need a vacation.

I’m having one of those mornings that the news seems to be a lot of same old, same old, and the topics being discussed on the other blogs are pretty much what they’ve been talking about for the past several days — whether the “tea party” movement will last and how Democrats are screwing the pooch. And I don’t want to write about any of it.

Kittens. I want kittens.

What’s on your mind?