But when Obama goes in the OPPOSITE direction, further right, is there not a point at which Greenwald and his readers would say, "Enough. We might lose this election, but we demand a party platform that does not maintain the status quo of exceptionalism that we see in political-class organs like WaPo. We'll vote Green Party unless and until the Democratic Platform is to our liking..."?

--Elephantman

Apparently you don't pay attention. In case you hadn't heard, but GG, ActBlue, StrangeBedfellows, and people who think and feel as these people and orgs do are raising HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars just to say "Enough!" and do something about it by defeating the UAs (Unamerican Accomplices) who can't fulfill their Constitutional Oaths.

Not only that, but it is Unthinking, Oversimplistic fodder to assume that any large or small Advocacy group can "demand" anything and hope to actually get something as sweeping as what you refer to. It must be achieved from the bottom up, laying one brick of the pyramid at a time, completing a level, and then starting another level, until you reach the top where real effective change can be had in a more immediate and lasting way. To suggest that simply tranferring support to a fringe candidate or party is in any way profitable in either the short or long term is intellectually infantile.

We don't have the influence or choices in this presidential election to affect the kind of change we hop'd like to see immediately. It is simply a matter of 1) slowing, 2) stopping, and then 3) reversing the lawless inertia of the past 7+ years as much as possible while building a grass-roots coalition with the staying power to affect change over time.

If you cannot grasp or accept that as what is going on and the only real way of succeeding long-term, you are not adding value to anything being advocated or done here.

Another way to study the authoritarian mind and the issue of why torture was legally approved (John Yoo) by the DoD and Bush administration is to read, or listen, to a transcript (Vanity Fair online, see sig) of the interview Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team, did with former Pentagon undersecretary Douglas Feith, who played a part in authorizing “harsh interrogation techniques.” Feith recently testified to congress that his views had been distorted by author Sands.

You can both watch Feith try to honestly examine why torture happened and bureaucratically try to squirm out of any real responsibility in the interview that took place in 2006. You get to see the authoritarian mind in action and the duality that also must go through McShame’s mind when he switched his views on torture that Jim White pointed out so well in his article in the blog Achieving Our Country.

Be sure to also read Sands cover letter to the Judiciary Committee, in which Sands responds to Feith’s charges.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/07/feith_letter200807

"What mental process allows a person like Jackson Diehl or Fred Hiatt to declare that their own Government is exempt from the rule of law and the most basic international norms yet still believe they are in a position to condemn other governments for insufficient regard for the rule of law and human rights?"

Why, it's called "American exceptionalism."

So should we not have criticized and opposed Apartheid in South Africa because of our own poor record on civil rights. Should we not criticize China for their dealings with Tibet due to how we dealt and still deal with our Native Americans? For that matter can any country criticize anything another country does without being hypocritical because really what country is perfect? Except maybe Iceland or Luxembourg.

"It's worthwhile to state frequently in clear, dispassionate terms what our country has done. Our Government has kidnapped people off the street and from their homes and sent them to places like Syria to be tortured for months (including completely innocent people) and then invoked National Security claims to bar them from holding our Government accountable in a court of law. We've disappeared others into secret prisons beyond even the reach of the Red Cross, or encaged them in a lawless black hole on a Cuban island. We've tortured them, sometimes to death, even with the knowledge that many were innocent. We attacked and completely demolished another country that couldn't attack us even if it wanted to. And our President openly declared that he has the power to break our laws, spy on U.S. citizens with no warrants, and indefinitely imprison even our own citizens with no process of any kind. Those are all just facts that aren't really subject to dispute or debate."

"What mental process allows a person like Jackson Diehl or Fred Hiatt to declare that their own Government is exempt from the rule of law and the most basic international norms yet still believe they are in a position to condemn other governments for insufficient regard for the rule of law and human rights?"

Diehl, Hiatt, and a number of other 'pragmatic Bush supporters' have as an unquestioned and unquestionable article of faith that 'America is a force for good!'. Therefore the criminal activities mentioned above either did not happen, or - in some fundamentally important way - were 'regrettably necessary in the real world', or were an intrinsically good response to the vast implacable evil that we face.

Their vision of law is that we have laws to produce good behavior. Since 'America is a force for good' the actions of the United States government (unless it is run by anti-American people like Democrats and other Soviet-inspired leftists) are always an attempt at good behavior. In their view America, as incarnated in the United States Government, is not at all 'above the law' - instead America defines and completes the law, bringing to it a harmony and wholeness that inevitably derives from America being a Force for Good!.

They are behaving completely logically, and generously, given their unquestioned article of faith. By their lights they are good people struggling in a hard hard world. Recognizing the harm that the United States has done would require them to examine the nature of their faith in America - and for them that would be an attack on goodness itself....