Sullivan can't be bothered to think it through. O has invested in Dinner Jacket by speaking softly at this critical moment. If DJ makes it out the other end O can be expected to get something in return. He may not, but that's pretty much the point in not backing the uprising in the fashion of the Germans and French.

So O has made a choice, with benefits and consequences, whether Sullivan wants to acknowledge it or not. And if politicians aren't about their choices, what are they about?

"invested in Dinner Jacket". I like that.

I think he's invested in the idea that bad countries are bad because the US (or Israel) was rough with them and harshly tramped on their shy waif-like overtures of friendship. After all, Obam was born about the time that leftists were all insisting that the flower-like leaders of North Vietnam were sending "signals" that they wished to make peace; signals too subtle and diaphanous for a coarse brute like Nixon to even notice...

I think it's more cynical than that. Why shouldn't Obama just make nice with whoever is in charge of Iran today? If it changes, he'll lead with "as I have always said" and Old Media will trumpet that, and Obama's supporters will believe it, just like the American Left shifted on Nazi Germany with respect to the USSR.

This is a point on which I disagree with our host about his nihilism theory. To be a nihilist you have to have respect for causality, that actions have consequences (you just have a different value function from our host). I think that much of Modern American Liberal thought explicitly disavows causality and using this as an example, Obama simply doesn't expect any permanent consequences from his actions. Whatever happens can be spun to a different result when that is expedient.

In that case, why not just do whatever is easiest at the moment? And it's always easier to attack the weak, honest, and decent.

" To be a nihilist you have to have respect for causality" I don't get it. Please edify me, Wise Old Guy!

In a bigger sense, Obama is not really a person. He's a golem, summoned forth by the collective unconscious of millions of leftists, dreaming of an ideal candidate. If he's "doing what's easiest at the moment," it is because that's what the hive-mind wants.

And if at a moment like this, "liberals" want to just slide past..... well, if that's not nihilism, what is it? Certainly they are not liberals!

"Causilty" is the connection between action and effect. Even a nihilist has this expectation, that he can perform actions which will have effects, i.e. that his actions can destroy things. He has goals and acts to achieve those goals in an objective reality.

I think that Modern American Liberalism has degenerated to the state where they no longer believe in causality, that their world view is constructed primarily to deny causality. What is their libertinism except actions for which they expect no consequences? Is not their idolization of totalitarian society a means to have that society protect them from all consequences of actions?

You think Obama does X to achieve Y, where as I think Obama cannot, at a fundamental level, grasp the concept that X causes Y. I think he and his ilk are (for the most part) so lost in considering their internal mental state as the Final Cause that they no longer see the world as place in which to act.

Think of them as disgruntled teenagers. They don't intend to ruin their lives, or destroy their parents, because they can't concieve of their actions having such consequences. It is only with experience and maturity that they begin to grasp the causal chains that control the world and I think most modern liberals have not, in fact, made that mental advancement. They simply do not expect to be held to account for their actions by others or by reality.

To be sure, there do exist nihilists within that ideological faction, but by and large I think this description fits the vast majority.

You don't think that Obama is supporting the uprising, in the way that he thinks is best? If he came out with a full-on endorsement, he would allow Ahmedinejad to spin the uprising into a US-backed coup. It becomes not a popular revolt, but a battle between traditional Iran and the US/West, and in some people's minds that would justify the harshest measures. And you would attack Obama for his naivete. So instead Obama couches his support in statements about how the youth need to have their voices heard, and mentions that the US is a handy political football, and you claim that he is staying silent.

Well, Ahmedinejad is spinning the uprising as a US-backed coup anyway.

And yes, I think Obama is remaining silent, in the sense that most people will take his remarks as a bare minimum, showing no enthusiasm for liberty or concern for the fates of the poor Iranians. And I think he is NOT supporting the uprising, and wishes it would just go away.

And I think that this is what is normal for most leftists now. They are ice-heartedly indifferent to the sufferings of people in distant parts of the globe. Unless the US (or Israel) harms somebody in some way--then they CARE, and shed crocodile tears for the poor victims. Obama is merely a reflection of leftist thought in general.

In fairness I'd add that it is perfectly possible that Obama keeping a low profile is what will best help the revolution. We probably won't know for years, if ever.

But the question that really interests me is: What's going on in the heads of left-leaning people? What is this strange infection that seems to have spread among them, causing them to be no longer "liberal." And is it something like a flu epidemic......or is it the Black Death?

Whatever it is, it makes Julian Jaynes' theory far more plausible to me.

Ahmedinejad has no proof, he's completely on the defensive, and no one's buying it. Had Obama come out in full support of the opposition, well, who knows? But my guess is that it would make quite a few Iranians more suspicious of the protests and more forgiving of a violent crackdown.

It's odd, though - I don't notice a lot of apathy about this. I hear people discussing it at lefty coffeeshops, I see massive amounts of posts at my usual internet haunts, many of these posts marveling at how everyone in the forum is finally on the same side. The common theme seems to be "this is incredible, I wish I could do more."

In fairness I'd add that it is perfectly possible that Obama keeping a low profile is what will best help the revolution.

Yes, in fairness, I'd agree that we can never know for sure (Even the wise cannot see all ends.) But we know a little something about what motivates and supports dissidents engaged against tyrannical regimes. We know from the testimony of the likes of Solzhenitsyn and Sharansky. We have good reason to believe that propaganda efforts by the mullah’s will be seen through.

From Sharansky,

Our first indication that Ronald Reagan might well be the key figure in our struggle…came from the ferocious denunciations of him that appeared more frequently in the official Soviet press. Now, all Soviets were experts in the art of "reading between the lines," and of course us dissidents, we were the professors of this high art form.

Ps. Great comments AOG. You’ve given me something to think about. You’re hypothesis at least explains John’s first statement about Sullivan - That's not even remotely an argument - it sure does seem to me that liberals do that a lot. Must be some explanation for it.

Oliver, I'm very pleased to hear what you are hearing in your lefty coffee-haunts! (I often write, when criticizing leftizoids, that I'd be glad to discover that I am wrong. It's not kidding.)

AOG, awesome! I've often thought that the one great unifying factor of our generation--100% of us having read Jaynes' book and then left it on the shelf for decades--was something meaningless. I mean, cool theory and all, but what could anyone do with it? Nothing. Now you've revealed to us that a plague of bicamerality is the real cause of the decline of Western Civ. It all clicks.....