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June 1, 2006

The Near Enemy; The Far Enemy

I've been contemplating lately how partisanship is utterly corrupting in our society. In particular, how it is that the Left sees the domestic enemy, the Right, as the near enemy, and the jihadis as, at best, the far enemy (much the same as the Left saw the Soviets, Chinese, Khmer Rouge, North Vietnamese, Ba'ath and so on and so forth); while the Right sees the foreign enemy (the Soviets, Chinese, and so on) as the near enemy, and the domestic enemy, the Left, as the far enemy. On the principle of engaging the near enemy first, the Republicans generally seem to feel that once the foreign enemy is defeated, they can win the culture war; meanwhile the Democrats generally seem to feel that once the domestic enemy is defeated, they can worry (or not) about the foreign enemy at their leisure.

Before I could put those thoughts into words, though, Glenn Reynolds interviewed Peter Beinart (of the Leftist "fight the Republicans first" school); Wretchard wrote , showing incidentally how The Nation uses the fight against the foreign enemy against the domestic enemy; Brian Tiemann addressed how you can determine the general political ideology of a state by noting which side has the crazies with the conspiracy theories; and most importantly, Marc Danziger wrote this.

So, really, there's no point in me doing more than writing a brief observation and linking to people with far more thoughtful posts. The blogosphere has an astounding amount of talent, moving together (if chaotically) towards something vastly lacking in our "official" political and media discourse: understanding and context. Good for all of us.

Posted by jeff at June 1, 2006 9:22 PM

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Comments

To say that the Left sees the jihadis as the Far enemy is charitable. It would be more accurate to say that most see them as co-belligerents against the near enemy... a point Wretchard's piece drives home.

Posted by: Joe Katzman at June 1, 2006 10:04 PM

I did say "at best".

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 1, 2006 10:13 PM

More proof for you: Marc Shulman points out that Kevin Drum took the same book and (paraphrasiing) agrees with Bush's ideas on Iran, just doesn't want to support Bush in the process.

Posted by: Nemo [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 3, 2006 7:39 PM

Perhaps it's an example of Urie Bronfenbrenner's “mirror image” hypothesis but that's much the same complaint that the American Left has expressed about Bush: that he's exaggerating and exploiting foreign threats as a club to beat his political opponents with.

Posted by: Dave Schuler [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 5, 2006 7:22 AM