For a while during the Bush years I compulsively visited conservative websites like townhall.com to argue with the crazies there. Somehow, given the political landscape of the country in those days, I felt that sitting around in a left-leaning forum like salon and congratulating my fellow lefties on how right they were and how bad the Bushies were was a form of sticking my head in the sand. It seemed then that engaging the crazies head-on was the only way for me to participate in the national debate—after all, these were the guys who controlled the media and seemed to have the American public marching in lock-step with them.

Times have changed. Anyone who reads Glenn Greenwald knows that the hardcore Right's hold on the public is diminishing as we speak. And while reading the banter on this forum is entertaining, I no longer feel the itch to respond to the crazies. Before I was lashing out against them from a position of weakness, but now they are the weak ones, and their childish, jingoist distortions of reality no longer hold sway. Sure, they aren't beaten yet, but every time they open their mouths with another mind-numbingly inaccurate portrayal of the world—of their enemies, foreign and domestic, the nature of a piece of legislation, the situation in Iraq—they dig themselves deeper in their hole and make it ever clearer that they live in an alternate universe. All of their distortions have been shown false over and over again, and nothing we say will convince them of anything. Why bother? For the fun of it, I suppose, but isn't it more fun, now that we have the luxury of doing so, to dismiss them like the ants they are? There are real arguments to be had and real battles to be waged in this country now. Why bother arguing with a bunch of dead-enders? Why, as Harry Reid pointed out, get into a name-calling match with someone with a 9-percent approval rating?

Rick

What I don't get is WHY no one called Mikes Pace on one particular statement.

At the beginning or the mud wrestling he said this:

"If you are a white America reading this, KNOW that Islamists would LOVE to cut your head off. But you still defend them and shame Bush?? Look, I don't like him either, I'm just asking you to consider our 'opponents,' and their actions."

Let us subtitute the word terrorist for the word Islamist.

(Knowing of course that not all or even most Islamists are terrorists. Apparently Mikes has bought the Bush propaganda that hopes to make us see a valid religion in such terms. So let's give him the benefit of a doubt. Let's assume he meant terrorists.)

If terrorists are a threat to white people, then where does that leave the rest of us who might be black Baptists, Asian Buddhists, Hispanic Catholics, mixed race Unitarian-Universalists, Native Americans who practice their own spiritual traditions?

I am so confused. Did the 9-11 terrorists unload everyone that wasn't white before they crashed those planes into the Twin Towers.

I admit that like most Americans I was quite shocked at the time. In fact, I was so upset that I simply turned off the news and just didn't follow it for awhile, so it is possible that the terrorists actually did this and I missed it.

I really tried not to think about the horror much until suddenly I found the Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq. "What?" I thought. "Why are they invading Iraq and trying to equate the invasion with 9-11?" I am politically naive so, unlike most Americans (maybe I am not mainstream enough), I opposed invading Iraq without clear evidence of WMDs. I did not think we had that evidence when they went in.

Appallingly, I began to feel rather unAmerican. I have always loved my country. I loved it through Vietnam, strange assasinations, Watergate, Iran-contra, the uninspiring presidencies of Gerald Ford and Bush I, Clinton's blow job, and the 9-11 attack. Geez, what can I say? I used to be a Patriot.

Sadly I clung to my illusions and was doing pretty well until I got the internet. A whole world opened up to me. The much maligned mainstream media had failed me. Suddenly there were other sources of information. Weeping and wailing, I asked the god(s)/goddess(es) I sometimes don't believe in to send me a sign. I got it! It was called the Patriot Act.

I guess you know my sad story. It is all too common. I began to fear for my Constitutional Rights, then I began to fear for the rights of Iraqis (who, after all, we were trying to "save"), then I began to fear for the rights of all Americans. Next thing you know, paranoically, I began to obsess about that fragile document called The Consitution of the United States of America. After all, it only consists of paper and vision.

I wish someone would help me, because I think I am only a couple of steps away from becoming a deranged conspiracy theorist.

Perhaps my problem is that I am always looking at nuances while people like Mikes Pace only think in black and white. Oops! I think I even got that wrong! I should say he thinks in white and black. No. That is not nuanced enough . . . He thinks in white and OTHER.

I would surely appreciated any non-racist advise anyone has to offer. How do I begin to trust our elected officials again? How do I retain my love for my country? How do I stop my worst nightmare from reocurring, the nightmare that we aren't the good guys anymore?

By saying that propaganda is a lie, I was engaging in polemic, a mild form of propaganda.

So where does polemic become propaganda? When is effective presentation propaganda? What about marketing?

At any rate, to call something propaganda is to accuse the messenger of deceptive intent, a point too fine to use in a mud fight like this one, IMO.

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But as to torture, it might surprise some that America as a whole isn't as opposed to torture as liberals would like to think.

I suppose it's because America isn't the nation that most Americans like to think it is.