The left-right screamfest

I have previously mentioned columnist Matt Miller’s state-of-the-political-union musings, in which he asked the questions, “Is persuasion dead?… Is it possible in America today to convince anyone of anything he doesn't already believe? If so, are there enough places where this mingling of minds occurs to sustain a democracy?” And he answered, “The signs are not good,” citing the popularity of Ann Coulter’s “heat over light” screeds as just one of many miserable proofs of how “all the attention goes to the shrill.”

I would agree with Miller, and disagree. This bi-polar outlook arises from looking backward, I suppose. Reading our early republic’s press in which political camps eviscerated each other makes one wonder how the republic ever held together at all, let alone advanced. At other times throughout our history we have suffered from a vociferously divided populace over opinion-hardened issues such as slavery and foreign wars. Each side deployed its rabid Ann Coulters, each side talked past the other, and yet a “mingling of minds” somehow triumphed in the end.

So some comfort is gained from recalling past -- and passed -- insanities. But reading today’s partisan activists and some of their so-called political coverage can cause a rapid backslide into agreement that, perhaps, all hope is indeed lost. As evidence I give you merely the most recent example I’ve run across of willful manipulation and downright silly distortion just to rally the troops.

Last week there appeared a straight reporting piece on Senator John Kerry’s intention to initiate broader awareness of the Downing Street memo and its implications. “‘When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue,’ he said of the memo, which has not been disputed by either the British or American governments. ‘I think it's a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues here at home. And it's amazing to me the way it escaped major media discussion.’”

This quote was, in fact, merely a subtext within the story, which also addressed Kerry’s concerns over Social Security, tax cuts and health care. Yet how did the much-read Conservative Voice cover Kerry’s pronouncements? Well, it started with this utterly untrue headline: “Kerry To Push For Bush Impeachment.”

One would search the original story in vain for even an allusion to this by Kerry, but of course the Conservative Voice knows a lot of folks don’t read past the headline. So it deliberately fed an untruth into the right-wing rumor machine that it knows will come out as fact.

The Web site went on to “report” that “the memo purports to include minutes [actually, the minutes are the memo] from a July 2002 meeting with Tony Blair, in which Blair ostensibly said [he did say it and hasn’t denied it] that President Bush’s Administration ‘fixed’ intelligence on Iraq in order to justify the Iraqi war.” Given this coloration, the Downing Street memo emerges as mere scuttlebutt worthy only of derision by the serious-minded.

But then the Conservative Voice pulled out its big guns: damnation through association and repetition of the Big Lie. “The Boston Globe published an article by Ralph Nader, Tuesday, in which Nader also called for President Bush’s impeachment. The story is being carried on Michael Moore’s website and the Democratic Underground. Failed presidential candidate Kerry advised that he will begin the presentation of his case for President Bush’s impeachment to Congress, on Monday” (emphasis added).

Leftist dogs piling on and pure fantasy -- that is what’s accepted as news by the carefully fed-and-nurtured right wing of paranoia and gullibility.

Not to get too preachy, but sad to say some on the left are just as nurtured by fantasy-breeding demagogues with word processors who push tripe such as Bush had prior knowledge of, or even plotted, 9/11. I abhor the anticonstitutional plutocrat as much as the next guy, but reality is reality -- and there’s plenty of it, of Bush’s own making, to condemn him and his merry band of criminal warmongers without resorting to faith-based hysteria. When we do, we only look as foolish as the right and alienate the power-holding center.

Let’s not yet resign ourselves to the notion of democratic abrogation and permanent polarization, with each side catering only to its base just to ratchet up readership and irrational passions. Rather, let us accept, in Matt Miller’s words, that “like Sisyphus, those who seek a better public life have to keep rolling the rock uphill.” And we can do it honestly.

Comments

[Americus]

"fantasy-breeding demagogues with word processors who push tripe such as Bush had prior knowledge of, or even plotted, 9/11."

Mr. Carpenter: do you mean to imply that it's "tripe" to infer that 9/11 may well be a modern-day version of Pearl Harbor or the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or President G.H.W.Bush's goading of Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait?

There is plenty of evidence that points to 9/11 being exactly that. And plenty of evidence suggesting that many so-called progressives reject that notion, because they want to be "acccepted" by the Establishment media. Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Cockburn et al. are examples that come to mind. Et tu?

[Kid Charlemagne]

I perch on the fence regarding the possibility of Bushevik and/or corporate and/or Mossad complicity in the 9/11 attacks. I don't rule it out altogether, but I remember Hanlon's Razor: "Never assume malice if stupidity will explain the situation adequately."

Both sides are able to produce "evidence" for their viewpoints, and like most people, I don't have the technical sophistication to distinguish the true evidence from the sincerely-believed-but-dubious evidence. The UFO enthusisasts can produce mountains of sincerely-believed-but-dubious "evidence" for their viewpoints, too, and they, too, become indignant when their attachment to the reality-based community is called into question. I used to take the 9/11 conspiracy scenarios more seriously, but the passion of the enthusiasts reminds me uncomfortably of the UFO enthusiasts, or the other fringers who can be found on rense.com and similar sites.

Besides, as PMC pointed out, there's plenty of solid evidence to impeach the bastards without risking our reputations as realists; if we still had any real news departments in the major media, the Downing Street memo alone would be enough.

[Americus]

"Kid Charlemagne"

One of the main criticisms of Democrats is that so many of them take wimpy positions, or else refuse to take any position.

Most people who have studied the evidence, agree that the official 9/11 story makes no sense at all.

There is no disputing that 9/11 WAS a conspiracy. The only question is: who was behind it? In my opinion, the world's most well-known cave dweller wasn't. At most, he was a Patsy.

[Zola Daniels]

No doubt if twin towers were owned by the Jewish people the radical arab terroist would pick them to destroy and kill as many Americans as they could. So knowing who was responsible why did we go to iraq? Duh! Because G.B wanted a war and didn't care how many lives would be lost.All facts are so plain and simple that people are just now catching on. There will an end to this evil secretive administration. GB will be remembered as most evil, corrupt President ever in history!! ZLD

[Oleary]

I believe that David Ray Griffin has laid out a very convincing and as yet unanswered case that would leave the open-minded reader to accept the premise that Bush was either actively or passively responsible for the deaths of 3000 Americans at the WTC in 2001.

To take the examination of that possibility off of the table, given the lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq which has caused the deaths of 1600 plus Americans and the maiming of thousands of others, not to mention the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis, is rather foolhardy, in my opinion.

I am not completely convinced that Bush is guilty, but neither am I willing to dismiss that possibility as the product of "fantasy-breeding demagogues" by any stretch of the imagination.

[Saab Lofton]

The bottom line is right-wingers won't admit they're ususally wrong. Flat Earth? Wrong. Center of the universe? Wrong. Slavery? Wrong. Stealing Native land? Wrong. Forbidding women from voting? Wrong.
Segregation? Wrong. Nuclear proliferation? Wrong. Drug War? Wrong. Magic bullet? Wrong. Vietnam? Wrong. Weapons of mass destruction/links with Al-Queda? Wrong.

The right-wing assumes that, at some point, they'll wind up like Marie Antoinette if she ever met Stalin. But to assume makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' (get it?). Not all leftists are out for blood and vengeance ...

In this Star Trek episode, a Wall Street stock broker (Stalin bait if there ever was) was frozen for 300 years until a cure for what ailed him was found. Upon being defrosted in the future Roddenberry depicted ...(http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/01/14/scorched_earth/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt)
... when everyone barters their labors of love and a musician would no more be told in 2267 A.D. to work a "day job" any more than a black man today would be advised to pick cotton, the stock broker has the following conversation with Capt. Picard:

Picard: "People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We have outgrown our infancy."

Offenhouse: "Then where's the challenge?"

Picard: "The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself."

And therein lies the problem: Given the bully, macho mentality of your Republican relatives, they can't see themselves needing improvement. They're rich, white and pretty ... what more could anyone ask?

By the way, Debtors' Planet by W.R. Thompson
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671883410/103-6487097-7601467?v=glance)
shows what happened to Offenhouse. Tell your paranoid libertarian friends to shut the hell up, 'cause Starfleet didn't sent him to a "camp" of some kind. All they did was offer Offenhouse the only job a wheeler and dealer like his ass could do in the ever-ethical Federation: That of a diplomat. Instead of talking folks out of their money, Offenhouse talks whole worlds out of going to war. Perfect. How sweet is that?!

We could engage in that kind of job creation now, if the rich wanted to. And that's what being a left-winger is all about, waiting for the rich to either grow a brain or a heart.

[Americus]

Ambitious pundits who hope some day to become a regular guest on "shout-fest" TV programs know that won't happen if they question things like the official 9/11 story or who killed the Kennedys.

It's also why you will only see tepid (at best) questions about bush being wired-up, why Jeff Gannon spent so many nights at the White House, and whether bush stole the 2000 & 2004 elections.

If you hope to one day become a regular guest on TV talk shows, you have to "go along to get along". Especially, if you describe yourself as a liberal.

[Elisabeth Ham]

I always have a kind of chuckle when I read or hear the possibility that Bush et al, had anything to do with the 9/11 attack on the WTC. With the bumbling way they have conducted the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't think they could have ever pulled it off. When Bush made his nasty little comment about Rooselvelt and the Yalta agreement, I seethed. Can anyone even conceive where we would have been if this bunch of draft dodging, paper warriors had been in charge of the second world war? How can we have fallen so low??

[Americus]

Elisabeth Ham - You said: "I always have a kind of chuckle when I read or hear the possibility that Bush et al, had anything to do with the 9/11 attack on the WTC. With the bumbling way they have conducted the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't think they could have ever pulled it off."

THAT is exactly the defense "they" use whenever they do something as outrageous as 9/11. Clinton used the same kind of excuse: "Bureaucratic snafu", "Negligence" etc..

WHY do they all use that kind of defense? It works!

Have you ever studied the evidence that shows the absurdity of thinking a cave man could pull off something like 9/11? Now, THAT really is hard to believe.

[TruthToPower]

Given all the proof of the Bushco's lies, wrong doings, and despicable evil acts against humanity as a whole I would never assume they were not involved in 9/11. For me this criminal administration is guilty until proven innocent. So far they have proven guilty evrytime, they have yet to be proven innocent on even one single isuue. Bottom line? They are guilty bastards. Time will prove thier guilt. History will treat Bush as the Hitler/stalin of our times. Period.

[waldo]

PM mate

Sorry, I agree with Armenius; the scope of the horror unleashed by Bushco seems to suggest that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated to achieve the stated aims of neo-cons - American hegemony.
Dubya may not have been absolutely directly involved (plausible denial) but he's certainly capable of being an indirect participant.

[jumpoffjoe]

Ok, so no one has absolute proof that Bush et al were at least knowledgeable about 911.

there is overwhelming evidence, though, that points in this direction.

I'll point out merely one: who had a better chance of calling off the jet fighter protection for so long after the flights were known to have been hijacked? Bush (or Bush's Brain et al)? Or Bin Laden?

How do you spell "duh"?

[dorf]

It seems to me that the world has worked out perfectly for GWB and company. It seems doubtful that he planned the WTC bombing, but indirectly (though not legally) his policies and his henchmen have definitely allowed it to happen. I think that's more clearly the problem here. The Neocons have played a very tight game up until this point, and have continued to hold the fantasy together through strength in controlling the media, and thereby the understanding of most of the people. The Republicans have had very long term goals in mind since the end of the first term of GHWB. At that time they were seen as militarily weak solely because of the reticence of GHWB to finish off Saddam. GWB came into office with a chip on his shoulder, and a plan to return the Republican party to the prominence that has kept it in power for the past several years. Regardless of whether you believe that the election was stolen, it's a miracle that he could even have come as close as he has to winning TWICE! Kudos to him and his cronies for making the world believe, shame on the world for believing.