Letters to the Editor
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@Elephantman
This character considers the Bush Administration, and people like me, as the true "enemy." Not the people who fly jetliners into office buildings, or who suicide-bomb markets and mosques, or who dance around the burned bodies of assasinated contractors, or who blow up oil pipelines and police stations.
You know, the two are not mutually exclusive: a good American citizen can believe BOTH that Bush is destroying America and killing people for no good reason AND that terrorists are wicked murderers who abuse faith for political ends.
Despite the slogan of certain politically radical muslims, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
You apparently think people like me are greater threats to your freedom and security than the people who behead women for adultery, who execute homosexuals, who exterminate journalists and opposition politicians, and who believe in a totalitarian Muslim state, governed by Shariya law.
Well, that's the thing: you are. I'm not even scared a tiny bit of Muslim radicals. If anybody tries to put me under Shariya (which is un-Constitutional), I'll use my 2nd amendment rights to defend the rest of them.
However, if the US government itself becomes hostile to it's citizens, what are we to do? I don't want this country to fall apart. Republicans seem almost to be trying to make that happen on purpose. I think that, and I'm a conservative.
I always catch myself before I'd ever go as far as calling left-wing American Democrats my "enemy." That's one of my side's great advantages in the culture wars.
Most of "your side" is not nearly as restrained as you, then. If you've never heard liberals described as enemies of America, then you have never listened to talk radio.
You practically have to twist yourself inside out in order to match your cultural values with your overwhelming hatred of the Bush Administration and your opposition to just about all American foreign policy and national security initiatives.
Not at all true. It is precisely DUE to my values that I oppose practically every policy Bush pushes. They are invariably objectively radical and anti-conservative, and in my opinion, usually opposed to the American spirit, although that is more of a subjective thing.
But no one can reasonably claim Bush is any sort of conservative, and no one can reasonably claim the Republicans are a conservative party.
I mean, they've spent FIVE TIMES the entire cost of national health care! What the hell, people?! And most of that isn't even for Iraq, it's just plain ol' pork!
To sum it all up; while your "enemies" are U.S. Republicans, our enemies are the people who are true monsters.
Terrorists are monsters. They can hardly do a thing to me. I am more likely to be killed by lightning.
Republicans can, and already have, made my life much more difficult. The interest rate on my old student loan doubled for NO REASON OTHER THAN BUSH'S DEFICIT SPENDING. The yield on T-bills has tanked, so anyone holding even the smallest amount of debt gets to pick up the slack. Inflation is eating me up and there are no raises in sight. All of this is due PRECISELY to Bush's radically anti-conservative economic policies.
Further, my Constitutionally-guaranteed rights are being chipped steadily away, who knows where it will end, for no real security benefit whatsoever, and we get to pay for all these socialist security contract handouts for the rest of our lives.
Bush and his brand of Republicans are a far greater threat to the long-term future of the USA than terrorists. Terrorists could, at best, kill a relatively small amount of people. These terrible, anti-conservative decisions can literally bring America down.
Again, a clinical case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
The lazy-ass phrase "BDS" is a sure indicator of a true-born idiot, it's nonsense and you look like a moron saying it.
If you were any sort of conservative, and not a radical authoritarian rightwinger, you'd have "BDS" yourself.
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I mean...
Megan McArdle writes for the Atlantic and she's as dumb as stump, a real Lipstick Libertarian. I think Obama knows this, but some how Elephantman thinks he's running a campaign with a message of pessimism. I leave it to you to decide who is as dumb as a stump here.
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New (Debate) Post up
n/t
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On the debate and the media
Someone at fdl asked me to post a comment I made there here.
I think that many of us still can’t quite believe how in the bag for the Republicans the mainstream media are. I mean we talk about the corporatization of the media. We point out how this pundit or that has had an incredibly successful career despite always being disastrously wrong. We single out reporters who do nothing but shill shamelessly for the Administration. We castigate media outlets that blithefully ignore major stories, that accept without question even the most egregious White House spin, and that are motivated by the philosophy that IOKYAR but it would be grounds for impeachment or jail if you are a Democrat. And yet despite all this, at some level we continue to feel they are reformable, that if we show them where they went wrong, document it, give them the evidence that they will respond, that they will change.
But as I said last night, the ABC Presidential primary debate was when the mainstream media finally jumped the shark. Up until this point the media would occasionally go through the motions of some kind of balance or fairness no matter how perfunctory but last night their representatives Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos didn’t bother with any fig leaves of fictive objectivity. They came on with all the mindless passion and talking points that we have come to associate with the craziest of the wingnuts. The defining moment came when Gibson threw a tantrum and essentially stopped the debate until the candidates not only addressed his views on the capital gains tax but accepted them. Most Americans are little affected by this tax, but not Charlie and George. You see they are multi-millionaires. The media made them so. They no longer need to be paid to do the bidding of the rich. They are the rich. That’s why the media will never reform. Charlie Gibson isn’t a newsman. He’s a rich man. Everyday we get much of ours news from millionaires. Can any of us be surprised anymore at the blatant bias that we saw last night, that we see every night?
I liked to quote Upton Sinclair’s observation: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” But this is no longer really the case. Gibson and Stephanopoulos no doubt like their bloated salaries very much but they no longer depend or can be pressured on the basis of them. Their wealth makes them willing tools to the disservice they do us, to the propaganda, spin, and misinformation they feed us.
In its own twisted way, the debate last night was a cathartic experience for me and I hope us. The media are, to distort the words, of Lincoln of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. They may be replaced but they will never change.