Letters to the Editor
rollotomasi
Published Letters: 187
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Look on the bright side:
[Read the article: What Beltway media stars mean by "centrism" and "extremism"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At least the pundits were talking about national policy and not talking about candidates’ $400 haircuts, cleavage, or names that sound like terrorist leaders or deceased Middle East dictators.
Michael Harold makes a great point about the media pundits reflexively claiming the center of a hypothetical bell curve regardless of where their personal beliefs or opinions actually lie, which can only skew their analyses of political matters and players.
To extend this reasoning further, since the extreme right occupies their namesake position on this curve while also claiming its center, anyone to their left, including real centrists, look to be leftist radicals to them. The bell curve is essentially a labeling mechanism that the right-wing propaganda machine transmogrified to become their basis of political discussion years ago, which, along with media acquiescence both unwitting and witting, allowed them to dictate the manner and terms of political discussion and marginalize political opponents over time. It also happened to fit quite well with a "good versus evil" worldview.
This is exactly the game Bill O’Reilly, Fox News and the rest of the mighty right-wing machine are playing with DailyKos. Since the netroots have reached the third of Mahatma Gandhi’s four stages of social change ("First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."), the right sees the successes such as Joe Lieberman’s primary defeat and are focusing their sights on arguably the netroots’ biggest target at precisely the time of their highest positive exposure.
The machine fired their first volley to marginalize based on nothing more than a smattering of outlandish comments over God knows how long a period of time, and quickly succeeded in scaring off an airline sponsor for the netroots convention. DailyKos and blogospheric allies, including Glenn, responded with some examples of outlandish right-wing quotes of their own, which were clearly much easier to find, and managed to come up with a cancelled sponsorship of their own (and Markos commenting that “Two can play this game.”).
These are necessary and appropriate responses, but I hope DailyKos and the rest of the netroots realize that O’Reilly, et al’s efforts to marginalize them, likely present the netroots’ biggest challenge and measure of political influence - as well as potential for greater influence - to date, including Lieberman, and hope that a major topic of discussion for Glenn and others at the convention is this challenge.
I further hope that a substantial part of the netroots’ plan is offense, similar to Glenn’s aggressive approach to right-wing extremism and those who enable it, to find ways to expose these frauds not only to those who frequent these parts, but also to the less-interested voting public as a whole. The netroots must not repeat mistakes made previously by others and let disdain for their faith-based radicalism and simplistic worldview lead us to underestimate the power of the political machine they have built, including the effectiveness with which they distribute their messages and their ability to control the discussion.
To paraphrase Atrios, they are not nice people, so this side of the blogosphere can expect unprecedented personal attacks, selective/out of context quoting; false/exaggerated associations with fringe elements; threats to political figures, sponsors and the like who associate; redirections of discussions to terms they can control; internet trickery such as false comments and posts; you know, the usual smorgasbord of small minds and misplaced spirits. I hate to exceed my limit of one sports analogy per comment, but here goes: we know what they’re going to do and we’ve seen them do it time and time again, but they are devoted and disciplined and have a heck of a line; so how do we stop them?
And, by the way, the hypothetical political bell curve should be hypothetically demolished as an accepted method of political analysis.
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Re: Glenn's update: It's worse than that
[Read the article: The leak designed to save Alberto Gonzales]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]CarolynC correctly noted the last step in Glenn's snapshot to complete the circularity of the message: The administration and its allies then quote as gospel the media reports the administration officials anonymously supplied, a la Cheney and WMD.
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Give me liberty or give me ... a Friedman Unit?
[Read the article: Attention Democrats: GOP fear-mongering does not work]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It’s bad enough that Democrats kowtow to those who have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt not worthy of the powers to which they were entrusted, but to hand these charlatans and incompetents additional powers without oversight looking back or going forward defies belief. And for Sen. Reid and others to justify this by invoking the tried-and-and-true Friedman Units and false choices is admitting that this was done purely for political expedience, that misleading political tactics are perfectly acceptable as a way to accomplish objectives, and that preserving constitutional rights and liberties and ensuring terrorism is fought efficiently and with proper perspective are not very high on the party’s list of priorities. This is the epitome of weak leadership, both morally and politically.
This leaves those of us who see the widespread damage wrought by the radicalism of Bush/Cheney and fear the additional radicalism of Bush/Cheney and their executive branch successors facilitated by this legislation with a dilemma: do we keep voting for the same Democrats out of fear of what we see as the worst scenario, that of Republican dominance, or do we withhold that support while risking our worst fear? It seems to me like the Democratic leadership is already betting on the former. But if we are asking the Democrats to stand up to Bush/Cheney and for our Constitution, should we not then be willing to stand up to the Democrats who are enabling them and their successors to wreak further havoc?
Thanks, Glenn, for being all over this. The Democracy Now! interview was great, and has been matched by many of the comments here over the last couple of days.