Benghazi: the worst of both Republicans and Democrats

This Benghazi mess is enough to make you really despair.

For years now, liberals have pushed back against the "both sides do it!" trope that has always been a favorite of prominent centrists. And with good cause: mainstream liberalism is not nearly as dysfunctional as mainstream conservatism is, and the Democratic party is not nearly as sick as the Republican party is. I intend to say that in a way that is independent of my agreements and disagreement with both on the issues, but of course my judgment of where that line lies is colored by my personal biases. The problem is that "better than movement conservatism" is such a terribly low bar to climb, their is little incentive for liberals and Democrats to be anything else but a little better than terrible. American liberalism is a profound failure right now, and worse, a very proud failure. No, liberalism and conservatism are not the same, and they aren't equally bad. But they are both full of shit. And Benghazi is as good an issue as any to explore why.

Here are the facts that no one disputes: in a country where NATO and the United States chose sides in a civil war, participating directly in the removal of the old regime and in the installation of a new government with an Islamist bent, on the anniversary of September 11th, an American compound was the victim of a coordinated attack by militants that directly targeted diplomatic and CIA personnel and which killed four people, including the American ambassador.

The Republican, to the surprise of no one, has been to look for a way to use this as an excuse to attack Obama and his administration. The Democrats, to my endless disappointment and frustration, have collectively replied with, "nothing to see here." Worse, their surrogates in our political media have taken that ball and ran with it. It's the worst kind of partisanship there is, letting the other side's bogus opinions dictate your own.

To begin with: yes, of course, the Republicans are full shit. "Republicans full of shit" could accurately be printed in the newspaper every day. I have no doubt that the Republicans would be defending a McCain administration to the hilt under identical circumstances. I have no doubt that for many within the political media, the purpose of this is to find a cudgel with which to beat Democrats, Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Yes, some of the more outlandish ideas about all this are absurd. But so what? None of that means that there is nothing of importance to this story. The facts that no one disputes are in and of themselves a big deal. To deny that they are because some other people are exploiting them is useless partisanship.

That the Republicans are a unholy mess right now is not breaking news. Why that keeps being announced as though it is an answer to everything that's wrong with the Democrats is beyond me.

The most ludicrous idiocy of this is the dismissal of "conspiracy theories" about CIA involvement. It's indicative of the absolute worst instincts of contemporary liberalism: the assumption of the unseriousness of opposing views, the recourse to dismissal via epithet, and worst of all, being so credulous of our government as to support the most violent and immoral aspects of it. Conspiracy theories? Conspiring is what the CIA does! Conspiring is all the CIA ever has done. Conspiring is arguably the CIA's explicit mission. There has never been a time, since the agency was founded, when the CIA was not conspiring in a way that betrayed American laws, values, or interests. And I'm supposed to stop asking questions because you use the term conspiracy theory? Who could possibly imagine that to be an adult response? To understand the role of the CIA since its inception, and to recognize that the United States was directly, violently complicit in the establishment of the current Libyan government, means that you must recognize that the people attacked were very much involved in the pursuit of American strategic interests in that country. Anything else is self-deception.

One of the banal but little understood realities of American power is that our diplomatic corps is in many ways a branch of our intelligence service. The coziness between our diplomats and the CIA is public knowledge that the public seems not to know. When diplomats become the subject of attacks, it is important for the public to understand and engage with what our diplomatic corps actually does in the world. But we can't have that conversation when Democrats insist that there is no story.

Worse still is the manner in which this dismissal occurs. Benghazi is the perfect example of the comedic takeover of progressive politics, the way in which progressives in the media have devolved further and further into permanent smirking jokiness. During the darkness of the Bush years, a kind of grim, self-defensive humor emerged in left-of-center blogs. It was understandable, in such a bad period, for people to adopt satire as their weapon; satire is the asymmetric warfare of political argument. But it's not 2004 anymore, and whereas this levity was once a refreshing tool used sparingly, it's become the dominant idiom of online liberalism. There's a forced, joyless quality to it now, and it's such a ubiquitous part of how progressives argue now that it crowds out actual effective arguments. I check out the online presence of a lot of prominent, respected progressives and I genuinely don't know what they think they're accomplishing with their endless stream of "teehee my political opponents are such dolts!" That's not an endorsement of bogus comity or respect. I believe in going hard all the time. But you do it with substance. I'm making an endorsement of actually expressing content rather than simply announcing how snide you are to the delight of the already convinced.

OK, I'll play to my reputation: Twitter can be (can be) part of this problem, because both the format of Twitter and its culture pushes people to tell jokes instead of to do something productive. Well, look. You want to joke with your buddies, cool. Just please don't mistake it for anything else than jerking off. Really. That's all it is. Just as I have to tell the kiddos on Tumblr that you can't fight racism with animated gifs, I apparently have to tell the progressive blogosphere that no matter how many times you tweet the word "derp," it doesn't suddenly become an argument. It's just jerking off, that's all.

This situation was an awful mess in which people died. But it was also an opportunity: an opportunity to talk about the wisdom of intervention in foreign conflicts, an opportunity to reconsider our conduct in the Muslim world, an opportunity to think long and hard about all the destruction wrought by the CIA and our intelligence services, and an opportunity to make plain to Americans what our diplomatic corps really does. That opportunity has been sacrificed, and for what? For the only activity liberal Democrats seem to have any patience for anymore: being clever. Not for education, but for snark; not for fact gathering, but for joke making; not for introspection, but for giggles. What a waste.

I don't understand why liberal Democrats are so committed to joining the Republicans as they stoop lower and lower. Yes, it is easy, and it's probably fun. But it doesn't do any good for anybody.

Update: Here's a simple request: if you're a professional journalist, and the CIA says "don't pay attention to this story, there's nothing to see here," and you say "hey, there's nothing to see here," quit your job immediately. Please. Never write another word again.