The Believers in Nothing

Excellent post by Greenwald, in which he dissects “why the Beltway class can't comprehend the Russ Feingolds of the world.”

[W]hen Feingold stood up and advocated censure -- based on the truly radical and crazy, far leftist premise that when the President is caught red-handed breaking the law, the Congress should actually do something about that -- the soul-less, oh-so-sophisticated Beltway geniuses could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing that because he believed what he was saying. Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered -- the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, let alone the merits of his proposal.

That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.

Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.

Spot-on. It’s all part of the “Get a Life” phenomenon I’ve written about before, the hosility toward political activists that’s even worse than apathy, combined with the notion that politics is just a game.

It’s bad enough when you see this sort of lackadaisical contempt coming from someone who’s primary role in the political process is voting, but when it emanates from the people who are paid hefty sums to direct the nation’s political conversation in the media and/or recommend a course of action for our elected officials, it’s enormously frustrating—and dangerous, to boot.

There’s a movie coming out soon about the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated, called Bobby, and today I saw an interview with one of its stars, Martin Sheen, whose son, Emilio Estevez, wrote and directed the film. Sheen was saying that Estevez was profoundly affected by Kennedy’s assassination, and that he made the movie for the generation who doesn’t have their own Bobby Kennedy, a man who “saw wrong and tried to right it…saw suffering and tried to heal it…saw war and tried to stop it.” The truth is, if there were a Bobby Kennedy on the political scene today, the Beltway Believers in Nothing would not celebrate his authenticity, but ridicule him as a lightweight, a crackpot, a cynical politico whose decency was just another clever shtick. Not only do they not comprehend people who believe in something real and thusly avoid ever acknowledging their existence; if the legitimate integrity of a person of genuine passion ever managed to penetrate their thick skulls, they would simply hate him or her.

Well, that there motherfucker is giving us a bad name!

No shit. As well you deserve.