It’s hard to believe that Noam Scheiber has actually penned a defense of liberal bed-wetting. “I pissed my pants, in retrospect, for no good reason, but I was justified in soiling myself because things could have turned out differently. In fact, if I hadn’t made a puddle in my pants, the administration might not have taken my fears seriously enough to avoid them coming true.”
No, no, and no.
The comparison isn’t between bed-wetting liberals and delusional Republicans. The comparison is between those of us who have the steel to stand up to the Republicans and those who wet themselves with fear. It’s also between those of us who were right and those who were wrong.
I’m really having trouble understanding what point Scheiber thinks he’s making. Does he seriously believe that but for the bedwetters, the Administration would have stayed in denial and sat on its hands after the scope of the website problem became known in the White House? That’s just dumb. They didn’t need any help from the peanut gallery to understand the stakes.
Really? If it wasn’t for the collective freakout Obama would have let his signature legislation go down in flames? But even if it was necessary to focus minds in the White House, an aggressive defense of the program would have been at least as effective.
Really pretty remarkable. I can think of no bigger problem the Dem party has than the endless cowardice demonstrated by elected officials and spokespeople at the slightest whiff of danger – be it running from and undercutting Clinton on gays in the military, Obama on Guantanamo and too many other issues to mention. If our party simply put up unified fronts based on principal our situation would be much stronger. And people like Bruce Bartlett, now lost to the republicans, would join and strengthen our party instead of rightly calling Dems the party of pussies.
All I have to say in response to Scheiber is a quote by British poet Edith Sitwell.
“I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.”
Meta: Pussy wing of the Democratic party asserts the virtues of pussiosity.
Say what you will about the rest of the article or it’s general premise, but I think this statement is absolutely true.
Yeah. I have my moments of panic when some bad news comes down the pike. But I generally shrug it off after a short while and move on. I don’t go online/in print and start talking about how this is evidence that we are “doooooomed! DOOOOOOMED!”
Here’s the thing if you’re at all part of the reality based community you both:
I think it’s fine to write about that, but letting panic undermine that writing or cause you to lose sight of the facts is a betrayal of the reality based community.
Well, I think that’s what we mean by “bed-wetting” in this case. In this case, at least, it comes down to which option you choose in a crisis:
A. Help fix the problem.
B. Shut up and get out of the way.
C. Keep reminding everybody that there’s a problem.
I work in an environment where, when things go wrong then people die.
We do not have the luxury of wetting our pants, screaming in terror, or hiding under the bed.
Some of us drill maniacally so that when the shit hits the fan they can leap into action and shut down the immediate dangers. Some of us cultivate clear heads and steady hands so that we may sort through the conflicting reports and deliver a response before anything explodes.
So…. it would please me to have people like that making the responses to dangerous political scenarios, rather than the hysterical ninnies whose portraits were sketched in this mind destroying little article.
Norm Scheiber has disgraced himself.
And while we are on the subject, Peter Beinart disgraced himself with his idiot book that served no purpose other than to assist so called liberals in making their excuses for Bush’s war on Iraq. He deserves to be shunned from decent society until he has groveled enough to earn our forgiveness.
I lost a lot of respect for Ezra Klein when he continuously characterized healthcare.gov as a “disaster”.
9/11 was a disaster that killed thousands and plunged us into 10+ years of pointless war.
Katrina was a disaster that killed hundreds and drowned a major American city.
healthcare.gov was a glitchy web site that just needed some concentrated effort to fix.
Now, it could have been a disaster if the problems weren’t fixed and the ACA spiraled out of control because of it. But that hadn’t happened yet (and still hasn’t happened). But calling it a “disaster” was bed-wetting of the worst sort.