Letters to the Editor
Ché Pasa
Published Letters: 865 Editor's Choice: 2
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Mansfield's Lunacy (an expansion)
[Read the article: The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]His argument is really quite pernicious, and he presses it with a kind of manic insistence that is easily recognized for what it is. He's crazy.
He's arguing for something more than a Tyrant, something more than a King, he's arguing for an Emperor, a Caesar, who would institute a Benevolent Dictatorship domestically, and who would correct and punish the Wogs overseas while exploiting their lands, peoples, and resources for the benefit of the Realm.
This is not Hamilton. Not by a long shot. Not even in his most fevered power-mad dreams.
And there is nothing whatever in the Constitution that supports his wild-eyed interpretation of the Executive Power "complete and undiluted", and even Hamilton's argument for a relatively unfettered Executive did not go as far as Mansfield is eager to.
However, the American Presidency has rather often fallen into the trance of Tyranny, sometimes for the better, other times for the worse. There is something inherent in the office itself, as defined in the Constitution and as various Presidents have elaborated it over the centuries, that tends to enable (and sometimes thwart) Presidential ambitions toward tyranny. This may well be a flaw that can only be corrected through a new Constitutional Convention, re-writing the thing. Nobody wants that.
And on the subject of Kings, is there a King or Emperor left in the world, anywhere, who has the temerity to claim the executive powers the Busheviks do for their President?
I think not.
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Oh Glenn!
[Read the article: The Politico: Exhibit A for our broken political press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's tantamount to someone who keeps chewing their food and spitting it across the room and then marvelling at how filthy things are and writing columns bewilderingly examining how and why the floor is covered with crusted food and what that signifies. -- Glenn Greenwald
Get down with your bad self!
Ay yi yi. That's writing!
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If anybody had the ability to discuss these matters seriously
[Read the article: Have Bill Frist and right-wing bloggers plagiarized their new Iraq plan?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]we might actually get somewhere toward a solution, but nobody can amid the all the catcalling and cheerleading.
You're right -- and very insightful -- to note the parallels between the Victory-defenders and cheerleaders. It doesn't matter what's going on, in other words, there is a ritual to be performed, and so long as that ritual is undertaken properly, the game goes on. The catastrophe that's under way is all but irrelevant. Just keep chanting and cheering.
You ask, "What does 'winning' mean?" And it is obvious to me that the cheerleaders see "winning" in terms of the Wogs' abject submission to their Overlords. They want to own their subject peoples, to see them cringe and grovel, and they want to order them about in any way they desire. What we saw at Abu Ghraib is what "winning" looks like to these people. The entirety of Wogopotamia and Wogistan submitting.
You ask who "they" are, and the answer is equally obvious: all Wogs whatever, with an equal measure of Brown People in general. Any one who is opposed in any way to the March of Empire -- by fiat can be declared Brown or Wog and thus be consigned to the category of They, to be forced to Submit, so that the Victory Believers can Win.