Why would you expect the media to object to the Bushies' radical agenda, when (with a few notable exceptions, such as Senator Feingold--who, of course, is not "Serious") most of the Democrats have not seriously objected either? The Democrats not only sat silently by while the Bushies hijacked our Constitution and torpedoed our basic notions of human rights, they actively and repeatedly aided and abetted the Bushies--indeed, in some cases they cheered them on (the obscene Military Commissions Act being one instance of that).

Th media is dutifully tacking what it perceives to be a "balanced" course along what it correctly concludes to be the "middle" between the Bushies and the Democrats--the problem is that their positions on these issues are IDENTICAL! The result is that you have the entire Washington elite--the GOP, the Democrats, and the media--singing the same tune. The result--no dissent is generated, let alone heard by those in power, despite the fact that poll after poll shows that nearly two-thirds of the electorate disagree with them--all of them, the Democrats, the GOP, and the media.

I worry for this country. I worry for my children.

yeah, I figure Sugarman got Sugarmanned, given his stated intent to comment-flood until the bitter end.

that was a weird one. I'm not a big fan of banning, but I'd probably have stopped coming here if it continued to be All Sugarman All The Time...

(Dem & Rep) long ago danced out of the hall and down the street and out of town and to the edge of the cliff, while we, awed by the spectacle, failed to notice that one is leading the dance, while the other follows, but both are now leading us off the cliff as we cntinue to follow them like lemmings.

The punch line of this joke, the King and Queen have a parachute on their backs and we, The People, don't.

As amazing as it sounds I think the Bush/Cheney presidency might be good for America.

Corey, I had similar thoughts in 2000 - to me, I thought the left in this country let Clinton get away with things like NAFTA because he was a Dem, and that they might wake up when a Republican came to power.

O, how wrong I was.

I feel we have been tested as a nation, have failed that test, and now am just waiting to see what tests we fail next. There's no organised opposition to Bush/Cheney - the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. I'd love to be shown I was too pessimistic, but I'm not holding my breath...

This could still all be reversed. The NYT article today reveals new facts about the administration's lawbreaking, lying, and pursuit of torture policies which we had decided, with futility, to outlaw. The Congress could aggressively investigate. Criminal prosecutions could be commenced. Our opinion-making elite could sound the alarm... We still have the ability to vindicate the rule of law and enforce our basic constitutional framework.

But does anyone actually believe any of that will be the result of these new revelations? We always possess the choice -- still -- to take a stand for the rule of law and our basic national values, but with every new day that we choose not to, those Bush policies become increasingly normalized, increasingly the symbol not only of "Bushism" but of America.

I honestly believe that something like the 1934-35 Nuremburg Laws could be passed in America and, in the main, all the temporary anger and frothing in response would disappear with the next story about a runaway bride or the sad tale of Britney's career.

Americans have been told the Iraq war was based on a pack of lies; that the people who pushed them on us are liars. We've been told about torture, secret kidnappings and secret prisons; about illegal surveillance and wiretapping of communications.

We've watched the country sink under the weight of debt fueled by war as a tiny wealthy minority becomes even richer. We're living in a culture where our children are being taught by public examples of greed, social Darwinism and corruption. We've watched as laws are passed, and Supreme Court decisions are made, that are nothing more than expressions of ideological power.

And, with a few exceptions (of which Glenn's column is one) nobody seems to care enough to change it. Not the citizenry, not the Democratic members of Congress -- and certainly not our oh-so-wise pundits and advisors.

I don't understand what's happened to my country -- except to say that it appears the Bad Guys won. They've fixed the game for themselves. They absolutely, utterly, do not give a fuck about you, or me, or the rest of the world; and will not be called to account. Not at all, not ever.

It's a relative thing (more, now, than it ever has been) that Americans "live under the rule of law". We live under Rule, that's clear -- but the law is Theirs, and not ours.

Glenn, a couple of months back you scolded some of your readers for their apparent hopelessness and sense of surrender, and, although a few of us thought that was unfair, you made some good points about how destructive that pessimism can be. Yet it wouldn't be hard to read your posts over the past couple of months collectively as pretty hopeless themselves. And even if they're actually not, it's unquestionable that your posts are breeding hopelessness in your readers. Just reading through this forum on a regular basis shows that the very truthfulness and clarity of your analysis is making a whole lot (though not all) of your readers feel (rightly or wrongly) like there's nothing we can do.

The few here who do offer hopeful advice about how to get out of this mess typically suggest either a mass movement of civil disobedience, which is inspiring but highly unlikely, or a stay-the-course plan of strategic voting and letter-writing, which is well intentioned but (to be brutally honest) not at all inspiring, or supporting a third party that we know isn't going to take power. I know I'm generalizing here, but I think the weakness of the optimistic suggestions we see in this forum only suggests an overall paucity of solutions and ends up reinforcing our general pessimism.

I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, Glenn, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. If frustration turning into hopelessness is a serious problem, then I think we've got a serious problem among those of us who are deeply opposed to what the Bush Administration is doing. It's not your job to design political solutions for all these problems, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on diagnosing the condition without offering a cure--those tasks are separate and equally valuable. Nevertheless, I'm not sure how you'd square the important work you're doing with your strongly held feelings about the need for persistence and resolve, which requires a belief that we can actually change things. It seems to me, regrettably, that your blog is inadvertantly chipping away at that belief.