S.E. Cupp: As stupid as she is attractive

It may be safely assumed that if S.E. Cupp looked like CNN’s Candy Crowley, no one would know who she is. But just like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, because Cupp is attractive, her stupidity matters far less to those who find favor with her.

I do not make the “stupid” charge cavalierly. Anyone who is familiar with Cupp’s downright nonsensical position that although she doesn’t believe a god exists, she nonetheless wants the president of the world’s most powerful country to believe otherwise. Put another way, she wishes for a president who answers to what she basically says is a figment of his imagination. Kind of like a schizophrenic.

Her latest column for the New York Daily News is an attack on Ron Paul in what amounts to a fourth-grade foray into international affairs—a complete mindfuck of gibberish, non sequiturs, and just plain ignorance of US foreign policy:

The problem is that Ron Paul’s America would be a scary place to live in. So would the rest of the world.

That’s not because he would, as he has so often promised, end the Federal Reserve or the Department of Education, but because he would end our history of fighting brutal regimes and human rights abuses around the world.

And what about our history of favoring and supporting brutal regimes and human rights abuses around the world? Cupp does not address this aspect or even acknowledge its existence.

She then proceeds with a familiar line of attack, made popular by Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and other neocon nincompoops who refuse to understand what the 9/11 attacks were about:

It goes beyond getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. On 9/11, his position is that we started it. “Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been explicit,” he said in Monday’s debate in Tampa, “and they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians fair treatment, and you have been bombing . . .” His argument was cut off by a chorus of boos.

He concluded that “we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years,” which is untrue, then asked, “Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, then there's some problem.”

Ron Paul’s explanation for the 9/11 attacks is shared the CIA, the 9/11 Commission, and anyone who’s ever studied US foreign policy for more than 15 minutes, using sources other than Sean Hannity. The 9/11 attacks were of course examples of “blowback”—the unintended negative consequences of US foreign policy. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries—overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1954, installing the Shah in its place, supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, imposing a devastating sanctions regime on Iraq in the 1990s that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people, bombing a critically important pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998, supporting dictatorial regimes as in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and elsewhere, among other crimes—it’s going to cause widespread resentment among the civilian populations in those places.

But instead of comprehending this fundamental axiom of not just international relations, but basic human interaction, Cupp takes an all too familiar swipe at Paul:

The idea that Bin Laden was justified in his violence is dangerous and patently anti-American.

Ah yes, the old, “Giving an explanation for 9/11 that goes beyond the they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms mantra means you are justifying their crimes and hate America” shtick. If this is true, then surely the American CIA hates America, because it’s concluded the same thing. Maybe in her next column, Cupp will write about how Langley needs to be purged of all its anti-Americans.

Continuing on,

This is what the founders advised,” Paul says. “We were not meant to be the policemen of the world.” One is left wondering, then, what President Paul would have done about Hitler or Pol Pot. What would he have done about Rwanda or Bosnia? What would he do now about North Korea?

Cupp isn’t helping her own case here by citing these examples, which show what a putz she is. With the exception of one these, the answer to her question is, the same thing all those other presidents did in those situations.

What would Ron Paul have done about Hitler? Probably the same thing Franklin Roosevelt did after Germany’s Japanese allies bombed Pearl Harbor: asked for a declaration of war on the Axis powers.

About Pol Pot, he would’ve done nothing, just like Carter did. In fact, Carter provided military support to the Khmer Rouge after Vietnam invaded in 1979. And that was our “human rights president.” For his part, when he took office Reagan continued to recognize the overthrown Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government.

Rwanda? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the US did nothing, again, with the Clinton administration taking its sweet time before it could bring itself to calling the slaughter of 20% of the Rwandan population a genocide.

Bosnia? Does she really mean Bosnia, as in the small peacekeeping mission the US had there for about a decade? Or does she mean to say Kosovo, for which we bombed Serbian civilians and after which the ethnic cleansing actually increased? Who knows? Who cares?

And regarding North Korea, Obama and his predecessor have largely ignored them, save for the imposition of trade sanctions. Truth be told, if Ron Paul were president, I doubt we’d see a big shift in US policy vis-à-vis North Korea.

What’s the matter, S.E.? Didn’t want to mention Darfur where the US did nothing also? I’m sure she would’ve mentioned the ghastly civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that killed over 5 million people, but she’d first have to know that that country exists. The US didn’t intervene there either.

The US of course didn’t really intervene in any of these places for the plain fact that there was nothing to be gained geopolitically from doing so. Or at least, the costs were perceived to outweigh the potential benefits. On the other hand, Iraq, which the US invaded, sits on an ocean of oil. Saudi Arabia, despite its tyranny, is a US ally because it too has a shitload of petroleum. Ditto for the monarchy in Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Cupp makes it sounds like a Ron Paul presidency would allow dictators free reign. But at least then we wouldn’t be supporting them.

- Max

The faitheism of S.E. Cupp

The underrated Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore once mused on the absurdity of stating a fact, but then claiming to believe its opposite. For example, the sentence, “S.E. Cupp is attractive, but I don’t believe she is,” while not a contradictory statement in and of itself, nonetheless conveys contradictory ideas. A statement like this is an absurd declaration that no rational person could utter with any sincerity. To assert A is to believe A (unless one is lying). Notice that what matters is not whether A is actually true or false, but whether A is being asserted or not. In a similar fashion, it is equally absurd to assert not-A, but believe A, e.g., “I didn‘t get an email from John, but I believe I did.”

Thankfully, real-world instances of Moore’s Paradox are few and far between, if they exist at all. But Cupp, the popular conservative columnist, author, and self-proclaimed atheist dangerously straddles the line demarcated by Moore’s Paradox that separates the world of rational thought from the world of total incoherence. There may not be another creature like her on the planet. Whether she truly holds wildly contradictory beliefs about faith and atheism, or, by calculated contrivance is carving out a profitable niche for herself as a nonbelieving defender of the faithful, we cannot know for sure. All we have are her words on the subject, and they make no sense at all.

Everything you need to know about atheist Cupp, author of Losing Our Religion—an attack on atheists (you heard right)—and her brand of nonbelief can be gleaned from this portion of an interview she gave to C-SPAN in 2009. Explaining her rejection of religion, she told interviewer Brian Lamb:

“I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t for me. But I’m envious. I’m envious of the faithful. So I defend the faithful, especially the Christian Right in America at every opportunity I get….I haven’t closed the door on faith. It just hasn’t found me yet.”

Yet?

“I don’t believe in a higher power of any kind. No deity whatsoever. I really believe that when I die I go in the ground like every other animal and that’s that.”

That’s good.

“I aspire to be a person of faith one day.”

What? What does that even mean? Becoming a person of faith isn’t like becoming a CPA. There’s no training or certification process. To say you aspire to be a person of faith one day makes as much sense as saying at some point you hope to be a postmodern feminist. Here’s a person who’s basically saying that she sees no good reason for believing in a deity, but that one day she hopes to believe in a deity that presently she does not think exists. In other words, “God doesn’t exist, but I hope I will believe he does.” Cupp hasn’t contradicted herself here, but this view is nevertheless bizarre.

The interview takes an even stranger turn when she starts heaping praise on George W. Bush:

"I’m a fan of George Bush…I think he had a conviction, personal principles that required him to answer to someone else when he went to bed at night. Not to the state and not to himself. I don’t see the same kind of reverence in some of our other recent presidents. Barack Obama included. Bill Clinton included. That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power. So he’s thinking about the decisions he’s making, not just because they’re going to affect him and his legacy, but because he has someone or something to answer to. I really respect that. And I think that whether you liked his policies or not, he really did what he thought was best for the country. And I think that’s really really rare."

At this point, Lamb asks what is no doubt on just about every viewer’s mind. Here is the rest of the exchange:

Lamb: If you don’t believe at all, why would you then follow somebody that has that as their way of life?

Cupp: As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state. He doesn’t think that the state has all the power and he doesn’t think he himself has all the power. That’s important to me. I mean, I represent two percent of the world. Why would I, why would I want someone who thinks that 98% of the world is crazy running the country?

Lamb: [Composed but incredulous] But you don’t think that that higher power exists.

Cupp: I don’t. But I don’t think people are crazy. I understand the allure of religion. I really do. I’m just not going to be dishonest and say I believe in something I don’t yet.

Lamb: But what if he’s hearing voices all the time and taking advice from a higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion, and makes decisions based on the higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion?

Cupp: Well, I mean, people’s faith—it’s very personal, and I don’t judge the way that people use their faith to inform their decisions. I really don’t. We can judge him on his policies, whether he heard it from a voice in his head, he got it from the bible, he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner. I mean, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’d like to judge the policies on face value.

Sensing an impasse, the interviewer moves away from Cupp’s whirlwind opinions on religion to spare the audience from further decreases in IQ.

Several statements stand out here. Let’s start with,

“That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power.”

Now, it’s one thing for Christians or Muslims or other theists to say this. After all, they believe in said higher power. But what about Cupp, who doesn’t? What are we to make of the person who essentially says, “I don’t believe in a higher power, but I’m glad the president answers to it”? As Lamb pointed out, she doesn’t believe in that higher power, so how could that possibly give her comfort? If anything, it should concern her that her president is getting guidance from a nonexistent entity. One has to seriously wonder whether Cupp thinks that a schizophrenic who receives instruction from benevolent voices is better qualified for the presidency than an atheist.

Her response is full of specious generalizations and tacit self-deprecation:

“As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state.”

First of all, Cupp says she is an atheist, which is to say she believes that religion is false and deities are nonexistent. Yet simultaneously she insists that believers in such falsehoods are the only ones qualified to be president precisely because they believe in god. Ok?

Second, Cupp is claiming that the religious are made more honest because they believe in what she herself thinks is a false doctrine.

Third, the idea that god kept Bush honest is betrayed by his administration’s penchant for mendacity and deception. Also, how honest and decent are the ruling mullahs in Iran being kept by their higher power? Or the 9/11 hijackers? Or the people who blow up abortion clinics and murder doctors in the name of their higher power? And what about the fact that Bush’s former top advisor, Karl Rove, is an atheist? Rove was arguably the most influential man in the life of Bush the candidate and the Bush president, and yet he answered to no higher power.

Fourth, implicit in Cupp’s assessment is an admission that she would not vote for herself for president because she presumably would not be kept honest by a higher power since she does not believe in one. In which case, how could we trust anything she says?

But Lamb hits a home run with his question, “But what if he’s hearing voices all the time?”

Realizing she can’t reason her way out, she backtracks somewhat, now saying she judges the president based on his policies. She’s a conservative, and so if a president has conservative policies that match up with her political beliefs, she’s going to view him favorably. As she just said, she takes a policy at face value, and said it doesn’t matter how he arrives at it, whether “he got it from the bible [or] he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner.”

So Cupp goes from saying that only believers should be president, to admitting it doesn’t matter how the president makes the decisions he does, just as long as they make for good policies, which for her means “conservative,” while seemingly maintaining her position that atheists like herself shouldn’t be president.

What do we call this position, where a person believes that what she believes to be false must be believed as true by another as a prerequisite for being awarded a special privilege, in this case the presidency? (I suppose this take would be fine if Cupp viewed holding the presidency as some sort of detriment or punishment.) Boiled down to its bare bones, Cupp’s view is,

“Atheism is true, and atheists should not be elected because they believe atheism is true.”

Or

“Faith is false, and only the faithful should be elected because they believe faith is true.”

Nonsense? Absurdity. Craziness? Cupp’s Conundrum?

Call it whatever you want, but I know what I’m calling S.E. Cupp: a faitheist.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com