Letters to the Editor
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Ché Pasa
I find it interesting--yet again--that in the same breath that you accuse me and some others of arguing against allegedly non-existant "I want instant relief NOW" types, you also accuse us of being willing to wait forever for change to come. So, the antidote to one supposed straw man is a second straw man? How is one to take you seriously when your own argument is laced with straw men? Let alone, as Gordon aptly points out, the fact that you've yet to explain how we are to fix things, um, SOON (as opposed to NOW, since you're clearly not one of the "NOW" types that I clearly made up and which clearly do not exist), as opposed to withing, oh, the next 50-100 years, as people such as myself are obviously willing to wait.
You make it sound as if things were more or less OK before Bush II took over, relatively speaking, and that the proto-fascist takeover of power and dismantling of the constitution took place almost entirely since then. Well, that's a bunch of of nonsense, of course. As Gordon, myself and others have pointed out (do you even bother to READ what any of us write, or is it your MO to only respond to the straw men that you set up because they're far easier to knock down?), this has been going on for decades, and is not unprecedented in US history. They took advantage of an already quite weak and corrupted political and legal system--as have ALL dictatorial regimes throughout history--and simply accelerated the transformation.
Nor, would I argue, is this transformation anywhere near complete, a contention made by some for which I fail to see sufficient concrete supporting evidence--Glenn himself has disputed this contention, which doesn't necessarily make him right, but I find his arguments against it far more compelling than the ones for it.
Your argument appears to be that we're literally about to go over a cliff, so there is no time to waste, we can't afford to be patient, and must act urgently, or else all will be lost. Well, first of all, as I just said, I don't believe that we're about to go over a cliff. Or, at least, you need to explain how this is so, and back it up. Second, you fail to explain how, specifically, we are to prevent this. And third, you misrepresent my and others' arguments that we need to be patient to mean that we must be infinitely patient, when all that I (and I presume others) are arguing is that, given how long it's taken for all this to happen, there is literally a limit to how quickly we can turn things around. I stand by my ship analogy--they don't turn on a dime, no matter how much you'd like them to or say that they can.
Again, WHAT would you have anyone do that is likely to fix things any faster? I don't recall your mentioning a single specific action that might accomplish this. Impeachment? How exactly does that work if the votes for it are not and likely never will be there in the senate, and possibly even house? Legal action? That takes years, by design, and the salting of the judiciary and DoJ with far-right Federalist Society hacks makes that even less promising. What else? Activism, mass protests, open revolutions? Seriously, what are you suggesting other than the generalized panic that you are urging the rest of us to express, as a way to move things along faster?
Instead of your vague generalities about how we're at the brink and cannot afford to wait any longer and have to do something NOW (oops, I meant SOON), I and others have proposed various SPECIFIC actions, that are in fact now being taken (if not quite as aggressively as they should--I do agree with you on that one), that actually stand a chance of succeeding, but which are simply not going to work as fast as we'd like. Our system, as Glenn explained, was simply not designed for fast change and action--intentionally, to avoid radical shifts that might imperil the republic--and just as it wasn't slowly dismantled overnight, neither can or will it be fixed overnight. And a panicky approach--which yours is--is simply not helpful--especially seeing as it contains no specifics on what alternative actions might be taken that stand a better chance of turning things around faster.
Seriously, be more specific or it's going to be hard to take you seriously. When one objects to the status quo, one is morally obliged to propose specific ways of changing it for the better. If you don't like the current, ongoing approaches to reversing the horrors of the Bush years--or their pace--then you need to offer up some of your own. So, what are they?