Friday, February 11, 2005
Outrage overload
Four news items in one day provoke a case of "outrage overload". I can do little more than list them:
The "moral" Bush government, that so loves to spread "freedom" to the world (except Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and Russia, and China, and...) also likes to pick up foreign citizens merely suspected, by the boneheads in our intelligence services, of being connected to known terrorists, then delivers them to oppressive regimes for months of torture. As Bob Herbert points out, this is akin to contract killing in its gruesome disregard for liberty, life, and law. There is not an ounce of honest love from freedom in Bush's body, for you cannot have freedom without due process and protected civil rights---and Bush hates these things. How can you sneer at the "courts" and "due process", which protect liberty from the state, at the same time that you hallow liberty in the abstract?
Sinclair news is proudly in the "center" of the American political spectrum (smack dab between the American Nazi Party and everyone else). Their leadership is proud to use their access to the public airwaves to run a Pravda-like new service saying only good about our government, hiding the bad, and firing anyone who refuses to give up their journalistic ethics. All part of a continuum of Bush-party propaganda efforts that include covert payments to "journalists" for their support, and covert insertions of party yes-men as "journalists" in the White House press pool.
Bush didn't run on Social Security reform, and some Americans may be
belated realizing they shouldn't have voted for the lying, smirking chimp. Oh well.
Some right-wing bloggers claim that "everyone" on the Left wants to (literally) destroy America, and are allying with Islamic terrorists to do it. I believe that's called blood libel. So... at what point do the American far right (i.e., the mainstream Republican party elite) decide that American liberals are the real enemy, and start using against us tactics currently reserved for the innocent citizens of countries they don't like?
Part of the the problem is that the wingnuts have their own vision of America, and refuse to accept any other vision of America as legitimate. Oppose their ideals, and ipso facto, you oppose "America" and are a traitor. Moreover, they have decided these ideals are embodied in, of all people, George W. Bush; oppose him, or point out his astounding dishonesty, hypocrisy, cruelty, and stupidity, and likewise you are necessarily a traitor. All treason means to the right nowadays is disagreement. Ideologically, they are headed for absolutism at a minimum, and at worst, fascism dressed up with the hilariously inappropriate rhetoric of liberty.
The "moral" Bush government, that so loves to spread "freedom" to the world (except Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and Russia, and China, and...) also likes to pick up foreign citizens merely suspected, by the boneheads in our intelligence services, of being connected to known terrorists, then delivers them to oppressive regimes for months of torture. As Bob Herbert points out, this is akin to contract killing in its gruesome disregard for liberty, life, and law. There is not an ounce of honest love from freedom in Bush's body, for you cannot have freedom without due process and protected civil rights---and Bush hates these things. How can you sneer at the "courts" and "due process", which protect liberty from the state, at the same time that you hallow liberty in the abstract?
Sinclair news is proudly in the "center" of the American political spectrum (smack dab between the American Nazi Party and everyone else). Their leadership is proud to use their access to the public airwaves to run a Pravda-like new service saying only good about our government, hiding the bad, and firing anyone who refuses to give up their journalistic ethics. All part of a continuum of Bush-party propaganda efforts that include covert payments to "journalists" for their support, and covert insertions of party yes-men as "journalists" in the White House press pool.
Bush didn't run on Social Security reform, and some Americans may be
belated realizing they shouldn't have voted for the lying, smirking chimp. Oh well.
Some right-wing bloggers claim that "everyone" on the Left wants to (literally) destroy America, and are allying with Islamic terrorists to do it. I believe that's called blood libel. So... at what point do the American far right (i.e., the mainstream Republican party elite) decide that American liberals are the real enemy, and start using against us tactics currently reserved for the innocent citizens of countries they don't like?
Part of the the problem is that the wingnuts have their own vision of America, and refuse to accept any other vision of America as legitimate. Oppose their ideals, and ipso facto, you oppose "America" and are a traitor. Moreover, they have decided these ideals are embodied in, of all people, George W. Bush; oppose him, or point out his astounding dishonesty, hypocrisy, cruelty, and stupidity, and likewise you are necessarily a traitor. All treason means to the right nowadays is disagreement. Ideologically, they are headed for absolutism at a minimum, and at worst, fascism dressed up with the hilariously inappropriate rhetoric of liberty.
