What Digby Said

MANIFESTO

From his post of last night:

[The Bushies] are rationalizing this failure [in Iraq] the same way they rationalize all their failures—by blaming them on the cowardice of their countrymen. It's worked very well for hawks and neocons of all stripes for decades now. They think up some hare-brained scheme that inevitably goes awry and they blame the people when they refuse to allow blood and treasure to be spilled indefinitely just to prove their misbegotten theory.

Harpers' Kevin Baker wrote a long essay on this very phenomenon last June wherein he opined:

[T]he stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

Needless to say, we see this very phenomenon at work in the irrational works and words of demagogues like (This is certainly not an all-inclusive list.) Limbaugh, D'Souza, Cheney, and Coulter.

Thus will it ever be.