Tough guise: An excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's new book

Here's an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's new book Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics in which Glenn explains how conservative boasting about "toughness" and "self-reliance" is a way for them to avoid looking at their own inadequacies (antiwar.org):

[Rush] Limbaugh is a physically weak individual, wallowing in a life of depraved hedonism, who has never displayed a single act of physical courage. He avoided combat in Vietnam by claiming that an anal boil rendered him unfit for service (and, once he became famous as an über-warrior, said nothing when a Limbaugh biographer falsely claimed it was due to a football injury). Thus, he takes pleasure in observing acts of American cruelty and barbarism. He finds "levity" in it and cheers it on. It makes him feel powerful and strong, feelings he — understandably — is unable to obtain from his own life and actions.

While the civilized world has recoiled in horror at the excesses and war-hungriness of the United States over the last six years, the only real complaint from our right-wing war cheerleaders about the commander in chief is that he has not given them enough torture, secret prisons, wars of aggression, barbaric slaughter, and liberty infringement. Their hunger for those things is literally insatiable, because they need fresh pretexts for feeling strong. And nothing provides those feelings of strength better than revering a tough-guy male leader and mocking liberal males as weaklings and losers. [...]

It's rather ironic (and almost certainly not coincidental) that these same neoconservatives [the Kristols, Goldbergs, and Podheretzes] strut around spewing tough-guy warrior rhetoric and sermonizing on the virtues of self-reliance even though they have chosen extremely coddled, privileged lives feeding off the accomplishments and directives of their mothers and fathers.

This generation's neoconservatives are protected, sheltered recipients of endless nepotistic, parental largesse who never tire of sermonizing to the world about the necessities of self-sufficiency and meritocracy. Further, they insist that their war advocacy demonstrates how resolute and willful they are — self-glorifying announcements they make from positions arranged for them by their mommies and daddies.

An interview with Glenn about the book is available at AltWeeklies.com.