Thursday, June 22, 2023

DAN CRENSHAW TRIES TO TURN THE OCEANGATE RESCUE INTO BENGHAZI, HAS HEAD HANDED TO HIM

The Republican Party's years-long project to turn Benghazi into a major scandal persuaded much of the GOP voter base that Hillary Clinton intentionally delayed rescue efforts when the diplomatic compound was under fire. It's not true, but the disinformation campaign was a political success, as the 2016 election results made clear.

So I guess you can't blame Dan Crenshaw, an ambitious Republican politician, for going on Twitter and trying to turn the attempted rescue of the OceanGate submarine into a mini-Benghazi:


Sadly for Dan, both liberals and conservatives think this is a ridiculous take:


I still have some skepticism when I hear that Donald Trump and "populists" such as Tucker Carlson have completely transformed the Republican Party with their denunciation of "elites" and "endless wars." I think the GOP base will have no objections if the next Republican president invades Iran or Mexico, or if (when) the next all-GOP government cuts taxes and regulations for the rich and big business yet again. Nevertheless, right-wingers as well as left-wingers are eager to attack Crenshaw for this take, and the right is eager to use Crenshaw's status as a Ukraine supporter and one-time World Economic Forum honoree to do so.

I'm seeing a surprising amount of skepticism about the OceanGate mission on the right. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush certainly didn't endear himself to the right when he said he preferred hiring inexperienced sub pilots in their twenties to "50-year-old white guys" (the young newbies, Rush said, are more "inspiring") -- but shockingly, Hot Air's Beege Welborn attacks Rush for this quote not because it's "woke" but because it's a rejection of expertise, something the right usually doesn't value these days:
The reason you want 50 year old, ex-military submariners – whatever their skin hue – is due to their experience. Not just fixing subs, and knowing how they work, but also because they are psychologically in tune with being underwater and may have been doing it for decades. Should something go amiss in the briny depths, not only do you have a knowledgeable hand on board, you have a cool-headed one. That beats inspiration all to pieces.

But you know what else? Young and “inspirational” is also a helluva lot cheaper to hire than experience. “Oh, we can train an inspirational monkey – anybody can drive the sub like a MarioKart!” It’s great until the Kart is on fire or caught in a hole in the Titanic.
A right-winger attacking a rich entrepreneur for valuing profit over safety? Watch out -- you start talking like that, next thing you know, you'll be saying that Elon Musk doesn't care whether self-driving Teslas kill people.

And that's not an isolated example. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh tried to argue on his podcast that Rush and his passengers display an admirable spirit of risk-taking -- the standard Reaganite argument about dick-swinging entrepreneurs -- and RedState's Jim Thompson wasn't having it:
Walsh said he admires people who do daring, often suicidal things:
“[For] the sake of exploration and discovery. I respect that...the world needs people like that. And don’t tell that, oh it’s not exploration it’s just rich people on vacation...stop that, they are going to a place where almost no other human has been, they are going to the bottom of the freaking ocean, you idiot.”
But the OceanGate owners admit – it’s a minivan with a pressure hull.
It’s an experimental submersible vessel, it has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death.

This is not your grandfather’s submersible – we only have one button and it shouldn’t take a lot of skill.
Some of the “shelves” in the Titan were bought from Camper World, and the submersible coffin is controlled by an [Xbox] game controller.

Walsh then mocked critics by reminding them:
“You have never done what [just] 250 people have ever done... and you never will.”
Cool. You’re right, Matt; less than 250 Buddhist monks have ever set themselves on fire. They were definitely trailblazers – for sure. Getting into a contraption that has Camper World shelves and is controlled by an Xbox game controller doesn’t sound like a trailblazer—it sounds reckless, stupid, and suicidal.
I'm sure there won't be many more moments of sanity like this on the right in the foreseeable future. But I'll take this one.
Posted by Steve M. at 11:45 AM

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