- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I'm wondering if some form of this isn't at work on long-time Beltway Democrats.
Most of them can't be so stupid as to buy the neocon "liberal media" bloviation. They know that the MSM and the Republicans are not out to protect Democratic interests (or their constituents').
So why in the world would any Democrat give even a microscopic portion of credibility to pundits and Republican operatives (did I just repeat myself? Probably…) spouting “warnings” about voter backlash to [insert principled stand here]?
Really, I can only consider it in light of the Stockholm Syndrome. This is where a prisoner or hostage starts identifying with the people around them, even though those people and their goals are inimical to that prisoner.
If a hostage can identify with a terrorist who will likely kill the hostage at any moment, it seems reasonable to me that a person who is merely attempting to maintain their livelihood could identify with others doing the same thing, only just much more aggressively.
From what I can tell, it takes a thick skin to be a politician. They are called names and have insults slipped between their ribs from their own party members, but are then supposed to smile and be supportive to the party member that stabbed them in the back (http://www.thepoorman.net/2007/04/04/he-learned-his-lesson-well). I conclude insults and name-calling from the other party doesn’t even register.
I suspect most of us would be quite oppositional to a group of people that called us stupid, ignorant, weak, soft, cowards, and traitors every other minute of the day. We’d see not just an opponent, but an enemy. I would think we would stand up for things like habeas corpus, right to privacy, Constitutional checks-and-balances, and peace, even if to simply make Monty Python French taunts at people who were trying to eliminate them.
Instead, the politicians who suffer these outrages see merely people like themselves, and hear background noise. The only thing that matters inside the Beltway is survival.
It has been said that politicians need to be changed frequently, for the same reason as diapers. I suggest a more charitable view. Politicians need to be changed so they can see the real terrorists as the criminals they are, and regain some perspective on why they were sent to Washington in the first place.
