Now that the Republicans are all hot and bothered about this, I wonder whether their newfound revulsion at the homosexuality in their midst will extend to folks like the semi-closeted David Dreier and other rumored gay elected officials, and the many rumored gays who work for elected Republicans in Washington.

Like you, Glenn, I am offended by their hypocrisy. I know Michael Rodgers-style outing is a controversial remedy. But if the Republicans finally stop quietly embracing those who do not walk the homophobic walk so long as they help advance the Republican political cause, that is something else -- not better, just different.

I suspect that driving the Republicans into that corner will hurt them in the long run although (or perhaps because) it would make them less hypocritical.

You are right, of course. Many of us saw this game as a sham from the outset. The very opposition we empowered last November is rewarding us with a textbook display of gullibility and cowardice. Predictable. Predicted.

But if we knew how this was going to play out, I think we have to follow the logical flow chart one more level, and ask ourselves another painful question. We knew we were Cassandras, condemned to see the tragedy but be ignored on our prophesy. So why did we play our part as we did?

We were not played in the sense that we expected anyone else to act differently. But perhaps we were played in the sense that we continued to do what we do -- see and speak the truth -- and thought that, this time, this time, it will make a difference. Like the soldiers in Iraq, we have a powerful psychological need to believe what we are doing is right, and that it matters. But does it? Measured in blood and treasure, it hard to avoid the conclusion that we have accomplished as little as they have. We continue to be right. They (and untold Iraqis) continue to die.

I am deeply depressed by this question. I do not claim to know what the answer is. Trusting the Democratic Party to change things has been proven foolish. As the game has been played during my lifetime, the path of the third party has been utterly counterproductive (though that depends on your perspective -- no Ross Perot, no President Clinton). Taking to the streets seems at best ineffective, a tree falling in a forest where no TV crews will hear it. My playbook is empty.

I fear that a massive attack on Iran is now inevitable. I fear that truths that you discuss here each day are like colors to an increasingly blind nation. And I fear that there is no path back from here -- that, like Iraq, our nation has gone too far down the path of entropy to salvage.

The MoveOn ad was, I think, unfortunate -- not because the message was wrong, but because the hypocrisy from the Republicans and the Joe Kleins of the world was so utterly predictable. On the whole I suspect that more harm than good was done.

But what is left for us? The game is so rigged that anti-war voices are sidelined (except when they are a welcome sideshow). Unless anti-war voices violate such asymmetrical taboos, they are ignored, as if protesting in the Bush approved rabble ghettos fenced off well away from Bush's public appearances. Ineffective, or counter-effective; not much of a choice.

By the way, Glenn, I thought you would say something about this study mentioned by another commenter here, which really seems to play into the subject of "Good vs. Evil" and John Dean's "Conservatives without Conscience".

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

The Constitution stood, bound and blindfolded, before Bush's firing squad. The call to the Democratic cavalry went out. And, lo, the cavalry rode in, at the very last minute... and shot the prisoner themselves.

I used to take the Constitution for granted, and I argued that the Bill of Rights was what really mattered, and what was most endangered. I was wrong, and it is all gone now.

I have always had some sympathy for for the libertarian viewpoint, but felt it was a viewpoint without a meaningful constituency. Now our very founding principles fall into that same category -- hardly anybody who matters gives a damn about the real intent of the framers anymore.

Well, at least enough Senators might -- might -- be willing to make the noble but doomed gesture to try to restore habeas corpus. That is our consolation prize? Pathetic.

Once upon a time, this was the kind of thing that brought out opposition from radical right-wing folks raving about our ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government), the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc.

What ever happened to those radical right-wing folks, anyway?

Of course Clintonistas are up their armpits in this cesspool.

As Arthur Silber recently discussed, Dubya's evil, and the recent Democratic acquiescence to it, are not sui generis. We have been heading down this path for some time.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/09/nation-on-edge-of-final-descent-i.html

So some of us in the left blogosphere figured out earlier than the rest of hoi polloi where we are headed. Hooray for us. But I am now close to concluding that we are too late to prevent the denoument. And that the reward for our vigilance will be the right to mount the guillotine face-up.

The America we have in our heads? The Platonic form of America?

Game over. Called on account of reign.