Talk politics.

From an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal: Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

The anonymous writers of this piece know perfectly well what they are saying and what they are doing. They are saying that "free-market reform" and a "transition to democracy" sometimes requires the vicious and murderous repression of anyone who openly opposes "free-market reform." They are saying that a leftist like Salvador Allende being legally elected to office does not qualify as "democracy," and warrants a violent overthrow so that "true" democracy -- one where people on the left have no real say or influence -- can flourish.

They are putting this on their editorial page because they know rancid nostalgia for a torturer and killer of leftists and liberals will appeal, not just to the current base Republican "base," but to the influential monied interests determined to hang on to their power in spite of growing popular anger and skepticism.

Pinochet fans on the lower levels, right wing bloggers and their commenters, etc., tend to be fairly direct about what they find appealing in Pinochet. The idea of forcibly removing, not just liberal and leftist politicians, but their liberal and leftist neighbors from the public sphere makes them happy. Hence the emphasis on guns, on changing the political landscape, not through elections and legislation, but by raw, physical force. The apologists for Pinochet on the upper levels, however, often adopt an air of unfocussed euphemism --"Took power amid chaos" for someone blasting his way into power using military force, "midwifed a transition to democracy" for murdering and torturing thousands of citizens.

I'm no mind-reader, so I can't say for certain to what extent these high level Pinochet fans personally embrace the violence of Pinochet's regime. It often seems more a matter of deliberately unfocussing their eyes and carefully looking somewhere other than the blood-spattered walls of the Villa Grimaldi, while congratulating themselves on their own clear-sighted realism. They want what they want, and if they can't get it through suppressing the vote, gerrymandering, or other subversions of democracy, well, sometimes what Jonah Goldberg so elegantly referred to as "dispatching souls" is necessary.

If someone took this comparison literally and decided American needed a Pinochet and they were going to step up to the plate, would the reaction from those high-level Pinochet apologists include an agonized reassessment of their fondness for the Chilean dictator?

Why would it? For all their euphemisms, they know perfectly well what Pinochet did. If they could rationalize what Pinochet did in Chile, and wish for it to happen in Egypt why would they not rationalize some free-market right winger in the military doing it here?

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